There be frogs in them thar ponds.

Seriously. A ton of them. The house I'm staying out is out in the woods and there are a lot of ponds and rivers and inlets in the area. The front of the house is quiet, but man, out by the back windows, it's a chorus of basso profundo frogs in fine voice, making with the joyful froggie sounds in earnest.

The odd thing, to me, was that when I first heard it, I was suprised and had to think of what it was. I honestly couldn't place it for a sec, and then when I did, I was both happy and sad. Happy to be hearing it again, and sad because at my house, there are no frog sounds from the woods and wetland. The forest floor is silent.

Down in the bottom of our yard, you see, it is not anything one would recognize as a pond. There used to be something more pond like on the other side of our property line, on land owned by a church, but they went to a lot of trouble to drain it -- of course, they didn't level it, so it came back, which makes me wonder just what the point was, anyway. But then they also cut down trees and mow a lot, and so I have my own rubber axe to grind with them. But that's not the point. Anyway. So down at the bottom of the yard over the property line is a whole stretch of woodlands, and at the bottom, which is also a hill, it gets a bit wetland-y. There's some water most of the time, and water-loving things grow down there. It's not deep -- it's more swampy, and it doesn't cover a ton of ground. There's no frog sound down there, though. Not a bit of it. And I hear tell there used to be, and that makes me sad. I would love to figure out why there aren't any frogs and what could be done to reintroduce them -- which might have the added pleasure of annoying my neighbors slightly. :) It's all good, though. The frogs would be worth it.