Month: April 2021

Rainy Day Frog

I really don’t need to know how much it rains. I am not a farmer, gardener or dam gate keeper. So this matter of placing a rain gauge in the perfect spot and then checking it after each rain is borne of my background; my dad was a farmer.

It just seems like something I should carry on, like searching for agates and butternuts. And, since I’m now known to have a rain gauge which I check and empty faithfully, I get asked often, “How much we get?”

Earlier this spring after a fairly steady overnight rain, I held the glass gauge at eye level to read 2 inches. Exactly 2 inches. And then it hit me. I really do need to know simply because I really do want to know. And I want to know because no one else is going to give me the exact measurement of how much it rained in my yard, or even on my end of town.

But rain gauges are work beyond the checking and emptying. One must be a gauge of temperatures, too, for on spring nights and again in autumn when the mercury is dipping toward the freezing mark, the gauge must come indoors, lest a quick shower is followed by clearing skies and freezing temps.

I’ve been caught several times, usually in the fall. The water in the gauge freezes, the glass breaks, and there’s a trip to the store for a $1.88 new glass cylinder. The new cylinder is shiny and clean, and the numbers easy to read. However, it comes with a cheap tin holder to tack to the deck railing or post, or an equally cheap plastic wedge to shove in the ground, at which point the wedge promptly breaks.

I toss the holders away, for we have a heavy, bluish-green metal frog who is all too happy to hold the cylinder and be called Rainy Day Frog. Rainy Day stands upright 6 inches on his front legs so his front feet and mouth touch the ground when the rod, which is attached under his wide gaping mouth, is poked into the lawn.

The frog always makes me smile with its eyes bulging and its legs rising and bent to form a diamond shape. And Rainy Day appears to be smiling back at me, probably because he always knows before I do how much it rained.

To the creek

May I go to the creek as a child again? I’ll put my shoes and socks on this rock.

I hope I can.

But where to put these worries and fears? Will the gurgling creek waters carry away the troubles?

And the tears?

Perhaps so, with help from the frogs and my memories. Of carefree evenings by the water.

Buds on the trees.

Of following a creek that only flowed in the spring. Cool water on my toes, frog eggs in a jar.

Birds with red wings.

A killdeer ran scolding through the pasture. A tractor groaned through its plowing chore in the field.

Was I ever happier?

I’d jump to the large flat rock in the small pond. Frogs leaped for cover. I stared at water spiders.

I’d stay too long.

Mom shouted for supper. I’d catch one more frog. Let it go and know I’d hear it in the night.

Through the fog.

May I go to the creek as a child again? I’ll put my worries and fears on this rock. Then I’ll close my eyes and listen.

I think I can.

Chatter on the pond

“Frogs.” My wife looked at the pond to our right, the pond hugging the narrow dirt road splitting the woods. “Do you hear them?”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t want to admit my lesser hearing. Not when it comes to nature.

“Do you hear the frogs? Don’t you hear them?” she asked again.

I rolled down the truck window. I could hear something. I shut the truck off, and immediately the drone of the engine was replaced with the chattering and clattering chorus of the pond. “Yeh,” I said, “I hear them.”

It was the first Sunday in April. Easter Sunday. With the temperature nudging 80˚, we went for a ride. Where the blacktop ended and the choice was three dirt roads that snaked away through the woods, we took the left option. I had taken it before, on spring fishing outings.

For the next mile, the road slightly dipped and climbed, and twisted a bit, with the lake only a narrow strip of woods away. Cabins were nestled among the trees. Well, not quite nestled in early April for there were no leaves to nestle them.

There were a handful of ponds on either side the dirt lane. After hearing the frogs, we sat for a long time, and the chorus grew louder. The frogs grew braver.

“Why can’t we see them?” my wife asked. And no more had she posed the question when the dimples of mouths and eyes started breaking the water surface.

There were bulging eyes everywhere. As I tried to photograph the frogs—what little of them there was to photograph—some frogs would shoot forward as if to chase a nearby frog. It seemed there was more going on here than just singing for joy in the choir on a summery April afternoon.

My wife shot a short video, the sweeping picture of the pond accompanied with the sound, its decibels climbing the longer we sat quiet on the road. It wasn’t a peeping sound. It was a constant clicking noise with no rhythm and yet a constant beat. So it was not the spring peepers’ shrill whistles, but rather the wood frogs’ sharp and raspy clack and perhaps the tree frogs’ fast-repeating calls of quank. Though not an expert in herpetology, I’d put my money on the wood frog.

It was one of those first days of real spring when you could have sat on a log next to the pond, closed your eyes, and let your ears soak up the rebirth of a season.

Pairing up for life

They’re paired up now, on the edge of lakes and rivers, where the cattails and grasses meet the open water, and in the marsh and ponds and wet fields. Canada geese are standing, walking, feeding, and floating, two at a time.

On a chilly day in early spring, I find warmth in this recurring scene of pairing and, we’re told, devotion. Canada geese mate for life or, taking the “death do us part” to heart, until they lose a mate to illness, accident or hunter’s gun. Only then will they choose another mate, and it may be a struggle to do so.

These birds are loyal to their mates over a dozen years or more of breeding and nesting. How long has that pair I’m looking at been together? Geese begin breeding as early as two years old, and can live more than 20 years.

But how does a goose that has lost its mate find another? Does it start looking in the flocks of fall and winter when the mating pairs are only loosely connected?

I saw three geese at the lakeshore the other day. Two floated close to each other while the other walked the shoreline. Suddenly the larger of the two birds in the water spread its wings and made a flapping, seemingly mad run at the bird on shore, chasing it off a ways.

Was the bird that was chased the odd goose out? Had it lost its mate and was looking to steal another’s mate? Where would it find companionship in its spring urge to nest, in its inherent obligation to sustain the species?

Later I walked next to a cornfield where ten geese intermittently watched me and picked at the waste grain atop the moist soil. As I drew closer I could tell the birds were loosely paired, even in feeding.

The female goose will soon be on her dozen eggs for nearly a month while the male stands and swims guard. For as long as it takes. For life.