When Bob and I first moved back to my home area of Southern Illinois, I was excited that we had a small pond with a waterfall right outside the back door. I opened the windows at night and fell asleep to its tinkling. Only one thing was missing, though: frogs.
Years earlier Bob and I had honeymooned in Vermont and had stayed at a beautiful inn. At night we could hear a melodic chirping in the back yard of the inn. It soothed me to sleep. The second day I asked the innkeeper what kind of insect it was. Turns out it wasn’t an insect at all. It was a tiny frog called a spring peeper.
That night as darkness settled in Bob and I tiptoed out to the pond. At first we could see nothing and were baffled. Then, as our eyes adjusted to the dark and we focused more intently, there they were: hundreds of frogs about the size of my thumb. It was enchanting.
Now, settled on forty acres in the gorgeous Southern Illinois countryside, I wanted frogs.
I called our local pet store and the young man with whom I spoke thought he knew what kind of frog I was talking about. He usually carried them, he said, but he was out right now. Damn. I really really wanted frogs. So badly that I began to call pet stores thirty miles away, fifty miles away. No one had spring peepers. So I called a bigger store in Missouri, a hundred miles away. They should be getting some in a few weeks, the manager told me.
I was elated.
A week later I was curled up in bed listening to coyotes in the distant woods when something gurgled outside my window. It sounded just like a bullfrog. Tossing the comforter aside, I headed to the back yard, and sure enough, we had a bullfrog!
By the end of that week the sound emanating from my backyard was deafening. Crrrrrr. Gunk-gunk. Cheecheechee. One part of the symphony would start up, then die down, while another section began. Back and forth, all night long. Turns out, we not only had a bullfrog, we had what must have been hundreds of thousands of frogs: spring peepers, gray tree frogs, and cricket frogs, at minimum. My dogs stood at the window and barked hysterically, then went into a room where the windows weren’t open.
Bob didn’t want to complain and I tried to convince myself I enjoyed the racket. In truth the frogs kept me awake most of the night and aggravated my tinnitus. Another week passed and I wanted to shoot them. Eventually I turned into a crazy person, standing at the edge of the pond and screaming at them to shut up. They didn’t listen.
It’s our second spring here now and I kept the windows closed during the height of the mating season this year. One of my dogs has since passed away but the other one whimpers gratefully from his bed. A few nights ago the clamor died down and I opened my windows again. Glunk, glunk, goes the solitary bullfrog.
It’s the only sound I want to hear.
