Rain and Frogs

It is dark as dark. Pitch dark.

The rain is coming down. The wind is howling through the trees.

And the frogs in the seasonal ponds are singing up a chorus to rival the Mormon Tabernacle or even Chanticleer! One of my goals in the next year or two is to see Chanticleer the amazing orchestra of voices from San Francisco. In the meantime I have the songs of the frogs – the calming soothing frogs of night. The frogs that Vampires, who seek the dark and quiet, love to hear.

Oh frogs we love thee, water born angels, sprites of the night.

In most parts of the world frogs hibernate when it turns cold. Here they thrive. The big ones are under our front porch. The little ones are in the ponds and creeks.

In the summer when it is dry they are quiet. The ponds are gone. The creeks are more or less dry. They could go down to the lake and ponds at the bottom of the bluffs. I imagine them walking in single file down to the lake, a half mile, single file on the dusty dirt paths. Tiny brown frogs, quietly determined to make it down to the lake, to the water where they’ll live until the first rainfall of Autumn comes again.

We like our frogs indeed.

We like the dark.

We like the trails when it is dry because of the mountain bike guys who ride at night. They stop and visit. Their ride always makes them tired. We never tell them that it is because they just spent a half hour with a couple of Vampires and their children. But it is all good. Everybody gets what they want – and the riders don’t know it. They’re unaware of who we are – they only know how good they feel after we leave them and how happy they are to hear the music of the frogs. They only feel the joy of riding with their lights under the night sky, on the dirt paths, down to the lake where the frogs spend their summers.

There are so many stresses in life for all sorts of creatures. It is a wonderful thing when we can spend time just enjoying the diversity of life and the songs of each other.

xoxoxo

Juliette aka Vampire Maman