They Come In The Night
One of the things I always liked about the gorgeous Colorado summer nights was the din of thousands of crickets chirruping away. I don't know why, but that sound has always stirred something in me that brings out the same safe, homely feeling that the smell of wood smoke and the sound of the forced-air furnace bring in the winter.
I always appreciated the odd individual cricket who continued chirruping the next morning all by himself. I pictured a pie-eyed bachelor staggering home from a night-long bender, but still, optimistically, lookin' for love.
When the crickets were in good form, on reasonably warm evenings, I imagined that I was a member of an alien exploration team that had just landed on this planet earlier that day, looked around, and found it quite hospitible and non-threatening. Then, night sets in and something ... something ... something starts to surround our landing site. Something that makes a terrifying, deafening, relentless sound. What is it? Will it attack? That sound! That sound! Aaaaeeeii - make it stop!
There seem to be fewer crickets here in Tualatin. But their sonic ecological niche is taken up by frogs. Just as with crickets and college students, once the weather gets warm enough, and their thoughts turn to love, they rise up each evening and start their merry chorus.
We live just across the street from a nature preserve (a tiny one) that includes a small pond on a stream. So the frogs in question are not just randomly out there, as the crickets were in Colorado. No, they are specifically our neighbors. We've asked them to hold it down, but their crazy partying goes on all night.
Actually, quite the contrary. We very much enjoy the sound the frogs make. I like it for several reasons. First, I know frogs and other amphibians are under severe ecological stress around the world, and it delights me that they seem to have here something of ... well ... a refuge. I'm honored to live by them in their time of need.
Second, they're basically invisible. Karen and I have gone over to the pond to see if we could spot them (sounds like there are millions of them there!). We took a powerful flashlight but couldn't see a one! They're just tiny tree-frogs, each one no larger than the first joint of your thumb (your thumb, I might add ... my thumb is like two frogs!) I think there must be a handful of common or bullfrogs in there, too, as there is a distictive bass section in this orchestra. I thought maybe I could take a picture and we might be able to spot a frog or two in the flash-lit photo that we hadn't been able to see in person with the help of a mere flashlight. When I loaded the pictures onto my computer, we couldn't see any frogs there, either. But what we could see, completely surrounding us in the trees and bushes, was dozens of sets of glowing frog eyes.
Third, I finally put two and two together and came to realize that maybe part of the resaon we don't have many crickets is that we've got frogs. Huh? In which case, I compliment the chef for being so thoughtful as to make both predator and prey so delightfully chirpy.
Finally, frogs are yet another of the many, many tiny indications that we don't live in Colorado any more. So many people bemoan the sameness of places in our country, particularly urban places. But I can tell you, if you walk away from malls and away from suburban strip centers and away from tailored city parks, Oregon is much different than Colorado. Rain! Trees! Water in the rivers ... what a concept! Frogs!
Grandchildren!
posted by Mique @ 10:31 PM
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