Frogs in
the Rain
Last
night we had one of those wonderful all night gentle rains that makes my
garden plump out in all it's colorful finery. Another enjoyable aspect
of the rain is the symphony of tree frogs that surround my house as they
perform their strange and other worldly sounds. The rain seems to make
them come alive even though I'd heard little from them in recent weeks
or months. I suppose this is their mating time because after a rain I
usually find my bogs and water filled planters alive with squirming
tadpoles. For some reason they seem to love it here and I love having
them. It makes me feel like I live in a healthy natural environment. I
suppose if you're not accustomed to them, they could become a little
disconcerting and annoying, but not to me. I welcome them with open
ears. They don't sound like typical frogs. Some almost sound like a dog
barking, while some sound just like sheep, and others, well, it's hard to describe, but they are quite
surreal.
Early on I installed 2 ponds
here because I love water plants. This is when I first discovered the
tadpoles. It was like magic because they simply appeared out of nowhere.
As they turned into frogs, it was even more amazing because the smallest
ones were the size of a pea, hopping around the concrete pad beside the
pond. I was enthralled at yet another of nature's astounding marvels.
They usually grow to a 3 or 4 inch length and they tend to hang out in
the most unlikely places, such as in crevices near the patio roof or
inside light fixtures. Once I was pulling my front door shut when my
fingers touched something squishy. I found a light colored 3 inch tree
frog in the hollow space behind the door handle. I encouraged him to
find a new sleeping lounge. Twice I've found one on my shower wall, but
I have no idea how they got inside the house.
My first personal experience
with tree frogs was in Atlanta when a friend took me to an old
dilapidated house he owned in the country. He wanted to give me the 6
solid oak columns that once stood on the front porch. Out back was a
large horse trough filled with water and tadpoles. I found a jar and
scooped a bunch of them up, took them home and added them to one of my
ponds. I didn't really know they were tree frogs until they grew and
started singing from the trees. I'm not sure all my neighbors were
thrilled with their loud sound, much louder than my current residents.
It didn't matter because by the next year I could hear them on another
street. For some unknown reason they decided to move on.
My next experience with frogs
came one Sunday afternoon when a group of us drove up to Tallulah Falls
and Gorge north of
Atlanta. I recently read that Tallulah Gorge was north Georgia's first tourist
attraction, really taking off when the train arrived in 1882. In 1970 Karl Wallenda, of the famous
circus tight rope walking family, walked across on a high wire stretched
across the gorge. Anyway, my friends and I hiked down to the bottom to
enjoy the beautiful scenery. The base was solid rock in many places, as
is much of the area surrounding Atlanta. On what used to be the river
bottom before the power company started controlling the flow to turn it
into electricity, were some large circular “ponds” cut into the rock. I
don't know if the ponds are natural or man made but you can see them in
a photo on the Tallulah Gorge website. Inside the ponds were lots of big
fat tadpoles. I found a discarded cup and asked the tadpoles if anyone
wanted to move to the city. I had several volunteers. I brought them
home, added them to one of my ponds where they promptly ate all of the
baby goldfish. I suppose if the fish had been larger, they would have
dined on the tadpoles. It is a dog eat dog world after all. Those
tadpoles turned out to be bull frogs with a rich deep bass sound. What a
treat. Ribbitt. By the way, I now know I should not have taken the
tadpoles, because , like wildflowers, if too many people do this, they
will vanish from the wild and none of us wants that. Please do not
remove any living thing from the wild.
I've read that frogs are like
the proverbial canary in a coal mine. In case you're not familiar with
the concept, coal miners used to take caged canaries down into the coal
mines with them for protection. The canaries are very vulnerable to
dangerous gases in the air, so if the canary suddenly died, the miner
knew he'd better get out of there as fast as possible or he'd be next.
Likewise, frogs are super sensitive to the many toxins we carelessly
spread about our earth in the form of fertilizers, insecticides and
other pollutants. Frogs have been around since the days of the
dinosaurs, but now they are vanishing in large numbers all around the
world. Some of the reasons are destruction by bulldozer of their fragile
habitats, loss of food sources, pollution, climate change and a fungal
disease called chytrid. Like the miner with a dead canary, we should
probably get out of here fast, but we can't. It seems to me if we don't
change our destructive ways and change them now, we might eventually
follow the unfortunate path of the vanishing frogs.
