Spring Preview

On the evening of Super Tuesday the spring peepers burst
into sound. Accounts I've read elsewhere state that the
peepers can be heard as early as mid-March, and are a
sign that spring is on the way.

Mid-March indeed. Those were northern writers
accustomed to colder climes. The peeping has
always started here in Northwest Georgia in
February, but even so, the 8th, the Big Tuesday,
was a little early for them.

It had been an unusually warm day, which probably
helped to bring them out, just as it had helped the voter
turn-out, even in the states further north, according to
news accounts. After dark it was much cooler, but yet
not really cold. Clouds covered the moon and hid the
stars, and I knew that the balmy day, rather than
beginning spring, simply presaged the coming rain,
whose heirs, in turn, would be more freezing nights
and mornings.

I was still wearing my "I'm a Georgia voter" sticker
when I slipped into my old coat, strapped on my
headlight, and headed off to the woods across the
road. Buckie trotted ahead of me, stopping to sniff
here and there, but still managing to navigate the thorny
underbrush and pine thickets better than ever I can.

As it seems that the frogs have always been singing on
a day before it rained, I used to think they were singing
for the rain, sort of a vocal rain-dance ceremony.

Now I know their shrill, ear-splitting chorus is only
the background for their annual orgy. Other creatures
engage in group sex, but no others mate amidst such
loud and jubilant rejoicing.What a great way to celebrate
being alive and aware again after the death-like sleep of
hibernation. One account I read stated that most of the
frog's body can be frozen while hibernating and not prevent
its full recovery.

The peepers do not choose the creek, but favor the spill-
over from a spring in the midst of the woods. There was
once a farmhouse, and perhaps some sort of spring house
where the farmer's wife set butter and milk to cool in warm
weather. Both are long gone, but the barn still stands, lights
from cars along the road glinting on its tin roof.

There are deep ruts from the heavy equipment used by
Georgia Power to clear beneath the power lines, and along
these ruts, eroded into ditches, flow small tributaries toward
the creek.

Following the ruts, one skirts a sort of marsh land, then the
small pools here and there, before reaching the larger body of
water that is the spring. As I draw closer, the sound becomes
deafening. What was a pleasant evening sound as I was
leaving my yard becomes cacophony close at hand.

You would think such noise would mask the sound of my
careful footsteps, already muffled by the thick carpet of
wet leaves. Yet, when I get too close to one of the pools
or ditches the sound stops. Or most of it. There are always
two or three laggards peeping on for a second or two, then
cutting off in mid-note, as if suddenly aware of the
strangeness of solo singing.

The coordination of the frog singers seems remarkable:
together they sing from pools scattered across a large
area, together they stop and sit in dead silence, no sound
but the distant rippling of the creek.

No matter how stealthy my approach, I cannot see any
of the tiny frogs at night. The largest would be only about
one-and-a-half inches long, some are under the debris at
the bottoms of the pools laying eggs, others scattered
about the banks, their color blending with the dead leaves
under which they hide.

Not until Buckie and I are back in our yard are they again
giving full voice to the same urgent jubilation. They will sing
like this for about a week, mostly in the evenings, providing
a pleasant background to our lives beside the creek.

Almost two weeks after our walk in the woods, on the
day after the next round in the primary voting contest
this time, I heard spring peepers at the pond in my
neighbor's pasture. Those at the spring were quiet,
they've gone back into the woods, perhaps becoming
inanimate again during the cold nights.

There were far fewer at the pond, no deafening wave of
sound, it was more as if they were singing rounds than
creating a chorus. That they were there at all intrigues me.

The spring peeper is a tree frog. Although, according
to some naturalists, the tiny frogs spend as much time
on the ground as in the trees, their natural habitat is
the woods. They do not live in pastures. To get to the
pond from the closest woods they would have to cross
the creek and a wide stretch of grass, constantly in
danger of being eaten by crows before dark and by owls
at night, then again when they retrace their steps-
or hops- back to the woods, where they will live in
relative silence and obscurity for the rest of the year.

I suppose that just as the birds return to the area where
they once were nestlings to build their own nests, the
frogs spawned and metmorphosed from tadpoles in the
pond remember to return there, and so they do, every
February.

There are even fewer there this evening, no chorus, no
rounds, just solos and an occasional quartet. In another
month it will be spring by the calendar, but I am weary
of cold weather and bare trees and the peepers have
provided a welcome respite.

Pictures and a sound clip of their cries is available on
the National Geographic website.

And by the way, about that Super Tuesday: Hilary Clinton
won my precinct. But Obama won the state, my vote counted.

Washington's Birthday

One February many years ago, Andy, my youngest child,
walked with me to our rural mailbox. The box was empty.

Oh," I said, "I forgot. There'll be no mail today. It's
Washington's Birthday."

Andy's eyes widened. "If he has a party, can we go?"

"Andy," I said, "Washington is dead. He's been dead for
a long, long time."

"Well why does he keep on having birthdays then!"
Andy started back to the house, disappointed.

Well, he doesn't anymore. Doesn't have his own day in
red on the calendar. Now it's Presidents Day. But there
will be no mail, a sort of holiday for me. I won't have to
get to the post office with my book orders packaged and
ready to mail.

Andy will be working as usual. Just another Monday for
him.

Purveyors of Violence

Hey, Kids! What time is it?

Never mind. This is much too serious for that. The State of
the Union. President George W. Bush stating to us that the
union might be moribund, but he, George, is going to revive
it with a shot in the arm.

Shoveling money into the pockets of the wealthy didn't do
the job. Didn't trickle down, just a painfully slow ooze. Now
he's going to try the other arm. Trying to stave off the
Recession that's coming at us like a yapping dog about to bite.

A week before his speech, while he was performing a knee-
jerk tribute to Dr. King, he studiously avoided any mention of
war. He and Hilary. Both praised Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr.,
for his courage, for his leadership in the Civil Rights
Movement.

They wouldn't have mentioned his courageous stand against
the Vietnam War, the speech in which he branded the U.S.
Government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today", for if "Iraq" were substituted for "Vietnam",
the speech would indict Bush, Hilary Clinton, and all those
who instigated and voted for the war in Iraq.