Frogs

About a month and a half ago we got a frog. He is loud. Loud is an understatement. I don't think LOUD quite does him justice. He starts croaking, the sound, not dying, every night about 7 and croaks all night long. We can hear him clearly in the house, with all the doors and windows shut. People can hear him on the other end of the phone. After a few weeks he got a nice little friend who croaked loudly as well. They did not croak in rhythm with each other, it was quite endearing. By this time, we had gotten used to the frogs and watched the clock for them to start croaking. And then, a few nights after Memorial Day they stopped. We don't know what happened, if they croaked for real or if they went on vacation or moved to someone else's backyard.

When we came back from Indiana our little pond was teeming with tadpoles. I cannot begin to describe what I envisioned once I saw all those tadpoles swimming around. There were hundreds, at least. We have a very small backyard. I pictured something like the plague of frogs in Exodus. Dave was like, "Oh, don't worry. They'll die and eat each other, we won't have too many." That didn't make feel much better about the impending plague. And we decided it would probably be best to keep the fountain off. Good thing our kids have seen Finding Nemo, because they understood the fate of the tadpoles if they turned on the fountain. The tadpoles thinned out a lot. The little black specks on the rocks are the tadpoles. Six days after the initial sighting the tadpoles were completely gone. I don't know if the water got too hot or what happened, the croaked before they could croak.

And then, Mr. Frog came back! We heard him and we were so happy. We hadn't seen the frogs at all, we just heard them. On Saturday night we went outside to see if there were any remaining tadpoles (I was hoping for one or two more frogs, not hundreds). Sadly, they were gone. We decided it would be safe to turn on the fountain. Gus ran to turn on the fountain (the on/off switch is by the porch) and Lucy and Dave were standing in front of the fountain. Right as the water started spewing, the frog jumped out of the fountain and landed on the fence about an inch in front of Lucy's face. We all screamed. It was fantastic! We got a good look at him and he was so small, especially for the sound of his croak! He hopped away and we saw another little frog in the mouth of the fountain. That one likes the water and did not want to hop down. They completely blend in with the rocks! Lucy yelled, "They are camoflouge, Daddy!"

We were really sad about leaving the wildlife at the big blue house. We had the most amazing birds and deer and turtles. It's turning out to be okay here. The frogs and the skinks and the lizards have been so much fun for us to watch.