Another March Madness

In a few weeks we can officially say, "spring has sprung," but last week on one of the warmest nights of winter the chorus frogs cranked up strong and loud in our backyard. The whole flood plain behind our house sounded like an a tiny army was hidden in the brush, all running their thumbs down the length of their plastic combs at the same time-"creeeeek, creeeeek, creeeeek." The squeaky song went on all night with unceasing devotion to the rhythm, a call and response chorus, a one-note bug-eyed symphony.

Of course it was a natural love song we were hearing with the windows open for the first time. Tiny platoons of amorous frogs (an inch or so long, the size of a big button) were courting in the grassy swales and moist woodlands. We've got plenty of that watery terrain and the resident frogs take clear advantage of it.

Also called "swamp treefrogs,' the chorus frogs call from shallow isolated puddles of water left over from the last time to creek left its banks or after a cold winter deluge. These puddles serve as temporary love nests for these seasonal swingers, no Las Vegas Hilton or Niagara Falls hideaway, but they fill the purpose. The frogs prefer these watery wastes we call "bottoms" for their yearly courting, singing all day and night if the temperature's right.

After the singing stops and summer creeps in, they're hard to locate. What seemed an army just melts back into the creek-side landscape not to be heard or seen again until next spring. It's more than a one-night stand, but not much more.

Scientists say populations of amphibians are diminishing world-wide as we build more roads and houses, clear more riverside forests for agriculture, and their old habitats shrink in size and quality. The ozone depletion and the weather changes have their effects as well, but one reason we built our house where we did was so we could hear this yearly shout-out for love while it lasts. At the first sound of vernal frog-longing we throw open our windows and the house fills with it. The song gives us hope that maybe we can actually find a way to co-exist, for species to do their courting in each other's presence.

Our singing next-door neighbors drop me into my own March Madness. For a month or so frogs become my obsession. I listen to recorded frog songs in the truck so I can sort out the species that are cranking up around us. From year-to-year I forget some of songs and always need a refresher course for this amphibian juke box.

After rains I watch the black top with care as to not silence any of the frogs crossing the low-lying roads around the large flood plain of Lawson's Fork. I drive slowly and pick my way among the leaping frogs bent on courtship.

I even bought a mobile of green tree frogs (of which the chorus frogs are a tiny cousin) for our bedroom and we watch as they spin in the breeze from the open window. It seems strange to hang frog effigies when there are so many outside. But that's one thing art does, remind us of our connections to everything around us.

Of course the frog sounds have made me start looking around for other signs of spring, the season of universal courtship, of earthly renewal. "The song of the world becoming," that's what poet Pattiann Rogers calls it. I've noted that the first horns of green have appeared on the blackberry cane, the twirling vines of yellow jasmine are now following the sun's climbing path with new runners, the iris pushes out of the warming duff, and the tiny sheaths on the buds of the cottonwoods unhitch and fall on the trail.

It's not just the plants that are beginning to respond. Other animals can tell the seasonal change is underway. On the deck, a familiar tribe of anoles have started sunning regularly on the south facing railing, and I'm watching the abandoned phoebe nest on the front porch light fixture to see if she returns to raise a brood.

But mostly it's the frogs that reset my time clock for spring. Soon the spring peepers will also join in, and if you try real hard you can sort the strands of sound and pick out the congregations of cricket frogs, green frogs, pickerel frogs, and leopard frogs. By April it always sounds like a wholesale frog party with no adult supervision.

Let them go at it in peace. The world's a big place. It's bigger than our need for ignorance or control. It moves along a path much wetter and wider than the route to work and back. It's so easy to forget we're part of a cross-species world community so much bigger than the human family. That's why this time of year I listen to what's going on in the watery wastes.

Right now a cool rain is falling. More is expected tomorrow. Open the windows in your bedroom tonight and listen. See if you can hear the sound of spring approaching. It will be the frogs calling each-to-each.