Jeepers Peepers

As I sat at my desk last night trying to concentrate on a subject to write about for my posts, a gentle breeze slid though my partially open window. Sweet aromas from the two apple trees in the back yard stir my scent buds. I saw that their branches were heavily laden with blossoms when I went to retrieve the mail yesterday.

The curtain gently undulated, following the ebb and rush of the warm spring zephyr. Rain washed smells of recently mown grass interspaced with the blossomed scents. My attention wandered away from the ideas that I wanted to share in my BlogSpot.

It was the peepers that interfered with my thoughts. Their cacophony of cheeps as they competed for mates was distracting and disconcerting. It is an endless concert, some louder with others singing backup. These little amphibians have high pitched calls, unlike the GAR-RUMPH of the bull frogs that lived in the ditches left by strip miners behind my parent’s house. Like here, the water wasn’t exactly stagnant, but its low flow encouraged the growth of algae and an underwater, slimy moss.

At my home place, the frogs loved the still water and as kids we found mounds of their translucent, mucous-like eggs with dark embryos tucked inside, clinging to the marsh grasses. We would check on the eggs progress throughout the spring. As summer approached, pollywogs emerged. We called them tadpoles. Huge heads, propelled by a thin tail almost twice the length of their heads, wiggled to push them through the water as they tried to escape our grasp. After their capture, we’d imprison them in an old jelly jar, keep them for a short while, before returning them to the waters of their birth. It was fun for us, but I’m not sure about the tadpoles.

Later, small legs would appear. The heads seemed to shrink to become part of the body. Soon, miniature replicas of their parents would emerge. They were more elusive and harder to catch, but my brother and I still tried to catch them too. Each year, the cycle would repeat itself. We were witness to the miracle of birth.