Frog Song

In contrast to the downer of a post before this, and maybe a little to balance out the good and bad in my own mood right now as a result, here is a short "Then and Now" sort of post.

I grew up (ages 2-10) in a beautiful place in rural central-ish Indiana.  Sure, the area in general lives up to everyone's stereotype of Indiana being all corn and other farmland, but as the folks running the Indiana Beach advertisements so earnestly assured us, "There's more than corn in Indiana."  There are wonderful woods of trees, exciting topography, diverse plant life, aesthetic streams and ponds, and frogs.  At "our old house," we had pretty much all of those in our pretty five acre area.

Right now, I am nostalgic over the warm spring and summer nights I'd spend on a pallet on the floor of my little brother's (and later sister's) bedroom on the back side of the house.  Our house didn't have central air, so my parents would run a window air conditioner in the evening in there and then open the window at night for us to sleep more comfortably.  I was a kid, so the wood floor beneath the blanket didn't bother me, and my favorite part was stretching out under my sheet, hands behind my head under my cool, smooth pillow listening to the night sounds through the open window.  Out past our back yard was our pond and woods, my favorite place to explore by day, and the source of glorious frog song by night--mostly spring peepers.  I fell asleep to their happy jingling every night, and it is a sound I will never forget and have missed since we moved to where we live now in south central Indiana.

Fear not though, for we now live in the intersection of a creek and a river and have a garden pond in our back yard!  For the past few years, our frog population--especially near the house--has been increasing quite a bit, and I again have frog companions of sorts to admire and fall asleep to.  They are not spring peepers, but I appreciate the diversity.  I also feel guilty for not recalling all the frog call identifications from 4th grade that my science teacher, Ms. James taught us (though you'd be surprised at what information and vocabulary I can tell you with certainty that I learned from her in Reach Science and Reading classes to this day).  I used to know those frog calls from that class cassette tape and packet of black and white photos (which I still have somewhere) like the back of my hand, but unfortunately have lost that through the hectic high school years and college information absorb overload.  I must research them again.

  So, before bed some nights, we find one, or five, frogs clinging to one of the living room windows happily shrilling their songs and partaking of the reliable smorgasbord of insects drawn to the light from inside.

Some days we find them sitting contently in the funniest places, like atop the shade blind on one side of the front porch:

And each night, I lie in bed reading or just thinking, listening the the frogs all around us enjoying the night.