TERRE HAUTE — It’s been most of two weeks ago now that my wife and I managed to get home early enough from work to walk our customary walk. The weather had warmed for a few days in this climatic seesaw we know as March, so for that evening anyway we donned our sweatshirts and walking shoes and headed down the road.
As we neared a spot where a yellow-clayed field drains into a damp copse of willows and white oaks, we heard a welcomed chorus of spring peepers, their familiar voices letting us know that although we had a few frosts and freezes left before the equinox officially arrived, for all intents and purposes, they were ushering in a newer, greener season.
We don’t have to find those shallow pools down the road to hear the frogs. A full-fledged wetlands and narrow pond below our hilltop house explodes with the little brown croakers each year as winter turns to spring. I do mean little, too; the typical adult peeper is anywhere from three-fourths of an inch to 11/2 inches long.
“I like to hear them,” my wife said as we tromped past the boggy choir that evening. “They’re a sign that spring is coming; they’re a sign that there’s hope,” she said. Hearing those peepers, I told her, must be part of the reward we get for enduring such long, hard winters…
Spring peepers, known scientifically as Hyla crucifer (Hyla means “tree frog;” crucifer means “cross-bearing” for peepers carry that mark on their backs) start their lives as tiny translucent, algae-eating tadpoles. Only the males sing — they’re really just trying to pick up young female peepers — and they differ from most frogs in that they have sticky little pads on each of their toes. Glands in the peepers’ feet secrete an adhesive onto the pads, making them the “Post-it Notes” of the natural world as they hang on the undersides of cattails and skunk cabbages and the long-dead stems of last year’s weeds.
Peepers don’t migrate; they don’t catch a plane for the coast or spend their winter months tanning in Mexico. They hibernate in the coldest weather under logs and loose bark, comatose and appetiteless. After their breeding season — March to June — they tend to hop away from permanent bodies of water lest they end up on the dinner plates of raccoons and skunks, snakes and herons. They primarily hang around our pond in March as if it is some spa for swinging singles.
As goofy as spring peepers may appear, they are one of the reasons we choose to live in the country. We do occasionally find ourselves snowed in, and we do have to drive a while to get to the market or mall, but the peepers and the coyotes, the deer and the green darners, always remind us how fortunate we are not to be looking at asphalt parking lots and garbage dumpsters from our windows. We hear those tiny peeping frogs when we step out onto our back deck and are welcomed by their voices as they’re carried on the breeze through our open windows. How lucky we are.
In his beautifully written book, “Small Creatures in Ordinary Places,” essayist Allen Young gives us many reasons why we should appreciate the peepers. He writes, “…consider the spring peeper, an ecological perfectionist who specializes in the art of the temporary … Often it is the smallest creatures that give us great insights into nature, for they function almost literally as the living bricks and mortar of a woodland, field, or forest network of spring pools.”
Young, like my wife and me, says that he loves to walk the woods in the spring: “At first, there appears to be nothing afoot and stirring. Then suddenly the air is filled with a symphony of peeper song and its hopeful message that life has survived the winter.”
The peepers are not a one-frog band at our pond, or in the countless other wet and muddy spots from the Gulf of Mexico south to Hudson Bay in the north. In our neck of the woods, we also hear green frogs and wood frogs and leopard frogs, the latter whose legs are a favored delicacy, although I’ve never been much interested in them. There are other species there, too, we’re sure, but although we can most certainly hear them, we rarely ever see them.
We also hear the big bullfrogs and their distinct “jug-o’-rum” call on warm summer mornings. They startle us when we walk the pond’s edge, and they blast-off into the water with a scream.
By midsummer, we see several varieties of tree frogs dangling from our house’s siding as they look for a meal near a porch light or storm window. Several years ago, we even had a pair of tree frogs take up residence in two bird boxes; how they eventually won out over their much larger winged competitors for the rental space we’ll never know.
But it is the peepers that we perhaps enjoy most of all. It’s not for their looks, either, for we can’t really find them. We love them because they are symbols of change, signs of the times, signal posts that suggest warm nights and green grass and longer walks.
Young warns us, however, that we are losing our frogs. He says, “As has recently come to light (he wrote his book in 2000), amphibians worldwide have been steadily vanishing since the 1960s. Because amphibians are good indicators of environmental damage — serving as the veritable canary in the coal mine — this is cause for serious alarm. Our forests are changing and not for the better … If the peeper music ever stops, fades away in springs to come, the earth is in big trouble.”
Soon, the peepers will be done with the serious fun of making a new generation of themselves, and they will grow silent and yield to the sounds of other animals around our pond. But our hope is always going to be that we’ll hear them again next spring as we shed our long-sleeved shirts and winter coats.
A new friend recently told me that the old-timers used to say that spring isn’t truly here until you’ve heard the peepers’ call twice. We’ve heard them more than that around my place.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or through regular mail c/o the Tribune Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Learn more about his book, “The Off Season, The Newspaper Stories of Mike Lunsford,” at www.mikelunsford.com. He’ll be signing and reading from the book at 6:30 p.m. April 13 at the Clinton Public Library.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: Spring peepers ‘specialize in the art of the temporary’
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We’ve created a honey of a problem
The Dutch clover is making its appearance in my yard this week. A cooler-than-usual spring has slowed its arrival by a few days, but it is here for now, bringing the honeybees and bumblebees with it.
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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