Night on the Frog Pond
Night on the frog pond is magical. Sure, it's kind of exhausting, tromping through thick, sticky mud and trying not to fall down. And if you're not careful with the bug spray, you'll lose a pint of perfectly good blood to mosquitoes on any given night. And it's often frustrating, particularly at this point in the breeding season, when (I'm told) there are fewer frogs to be caught and more effort has to be put in to every capture.
But last night the moon was waning, half-full, and brilliantly orange on the horizon. The frogs were singing, in a chorus of more than one species. As I looked for gray treefrogs I found lurking green frogs and huge, conspicuous leopard frogs that stayed perfectly still until they were absolutely sure you saw them, then leapt into the water with an ungainly splash. There is the occasional toad floating on top of the water, spotted and glandular. You can pick them up, right off the surface of the water, without much trouble. They're calmer than frogs, perhaps because their glandular skin provides a defense against being eaten by mammals, but when you close your hand around them they chirp, and vibrate like cellphones.
Lately at night, the dragonflies have been metamorphosing, and you can see them clinging to the tip of a blade of grass, crawling slowly and laboriously from the ill-fitting exoskeleton they'd worn as aquatic larvae, and then pumping up their wings to start their adult life. They're weirdly pale or startlingly bright green just after emerging, and their still-useless wings flash iridescent under the flashlight.
Last night I was accompanied by a muskrat going about his nightly business. He didn't seem at all concerned by my presence, and largely ignored me as he swam around, doing whatever muskrats do.
I startled a female wood duck, who flew off noisily, apparently trying to draw attention away from her five spotted ducklings. They huddled together on top of the pond in an adorable living raft for a while, before eventually splitting up. As I walked along the bank they swam before me in fits and starts, darting underwater for several seconds and then coming up chirping before diving again.
Later, on the other side of a particularly large pond, I saw a fellow frogger interrupt a raccoon hunting one of the ducklings (and/or its mother), and the ducks escaped to deeper water, leaving the raccoon to skulk off, looking for food elsewhere.
I am reminded how good it is to be surrounded by a community of living things.
But last night the moon was waning, half-full, and brilliantly orange on the horizon. The frogs were singing, in a chorus of more than one species. As I looked for gray treefrogs I found lurking green frogs and huge, conspicuous leopard frogs that stayed perfectly still until they were absolutely sure you saw them, then leapt into the water with an ungainly splash. There is the occasional toad floating on top of the water, spotted and glandular. You can pick them up, right off the surface of the water, without much trouble. They're calmer than frogs, perhaps because their glandular skin provides a defense against being eaten by mammals, but when you close your hand around them they chirp, and vibrate like cellphones.
Lately at night, the dragonflies have been metamorphosing, and you can see them clinging to the tip of a blade of grass, crawling slowly and laboriously from the ill-fitting exoskeleton they'd worn as aquatic larvae, and then pumping up their wings to start their adult life. They're weirdly pale or startlingly bright green just after emerging, and their still-useless wings flash iridescent under the flashlight.
Last night I was accompanied by a muskrat going about his nightly business. He didn't seem at all concerned by my presence, and largely ignored me as he swam around, doing whatever muskrats do.
I startled a female wood duck, who flew off noisily, apparently trying to draw attention away from her five spotted ducklings. They huddled together on top of the pond in an adorable living raft for a while, before eventually splitting up. As I walked along the bank they swam before me in fits and starts, darting underwater for several seconds and then coming up chirping before diving again.
Later, on the other side of a particularly large pond, I saw a fellow frogger interrupt a raccoon hunting one of the ducklings (and/or its mother), and the ducks escaped to deeper water, leaving the raccoon to skulk off, looking for food elsewhere.
I am reminded how good it is to be surrounded by a community of living things.
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