They seem to be back again. The spring peepers. It really has been a rough year to be a peeper.
I started hearing my first peeper in March. Just one. Calling all be himself. All alone. I mentioned it to someone else who told me not to be so silly. Peepers didn’t start until April. And when the weather suddenly took a bit of a colder turn for a couple of days, sure enough, my peeper went away.
But then, as if they were watching the calendar, they appeared in force on April 1. There were lots of peepers, peeping away into the night. It sounded great.
Then came Monday. You remember Monday. With the cold and the snow. Not exactly prime peeper weather. And once again they went silent for a couple days.
I was a little concerned. Had they frozen off their perches? Was there a spot in the bog where it was raining little tiny frogs?
You hear about that sort of thing in Florida. They get a cold snap and issue falling iguana warnings. The iguanas climb into trees, get to cold, fall asleep and drop to the ground. Since iguanas can get a couple feet long or more, you want to avoid falling iguanas. Peepers are not likely to pose such a threat to humans. Little tiny frogs won’t leave a mark if they fall on you. And since they tend to live in swamps and most of us don’t wander around swamps on cold nights, it’s not really something we have to worry about.
Although it did remind me a bit of snails. We had quite a few snails around where we lived in Newfoundland for a while. The snails were big fans of our garden. And when it rained, the snails would climb up trees to get away from the rain. Since snails come with their own built in crash helmets, when it stops raining they would just let go and fall to the ground. So first it would rain. Then it would rain snails. A small snail won’t do a lot of damage, but it still stings a bit when it falls out of a tree on your head.
But my concern about the possibility of peepers injuring themselves by falling off bushes seems unfounded. Last night they were once again back in force. I hope they stay back. For one, that would mean the weather isn’t going to get too terribly cold again. And I really don’t need to see it raining frogs. Even little tiny ones.
