It’s the first mild night of early April, and the peepers are screaming.
Their shrill chorus is most noticeable from the car, where the Doppler effect magnifies their treble mating call. But it permeates the air when I walk into the house at dusk, or let the dog out later at night before I go to bed.
I am always aware of the presence of frogs. I grew up with a frog pond in the backyard, fed by a tiny trickling stream that I spent many early springs attempting to dam up, hands growing numb in the icy water. I drank from the outflow pipe, miraculously never contracting any sort of bacterial infection from the murky water. The first fiddleheads I ever ate grew by its banks, and I spent hours every spring and summer harassing the green frogs, bull frogs, and leopard frogs that squatted on its muddy banks. I caught them over and over again in my butterfly net, holding them gently, staring into their impossibly gilded eyes, then startling when they inevitably pushed their way out of my waiting hands and expertly breaststroked into the camouflaging layer of oak leaves and pine needles on the pond’s bottom.
We heard, but rarely saw, spring peepers. Pseudacris crucifer is tiny, and blends in even more ably with its surroundings than its larger cousins. They are most active at night, a time that held untold terrors for my young self. An abiding interest in the natural world, and in outer space, was overshadowed by a fear of the dark and a phobia of alien abduction that lasted well into adulthood. I ran from the car into the house, never lingering to listen to frogs and insects or to gaze at the sky.
Thankfully, something has shifted for me in the last several years. In the careful tending I’ve given to my mental health, I’ve found that the enveloping darkness of Maine is a welcome part of the day. Night walks to observe comets or the aurora or just an interesting conjunction of planets have become something I look forward to, not an experience I white-knuckle my way through.
So now, when the peepers turn up the volume, I reach for my headlamp. Excited by the prospect of assisting amphibians across the road on warm wet nights, or just by seeing them out and about, I walk down the road in the dark.
Penrose came with me on my first excursion this year. I was on call, so we couldn’t go far from the house. We didn’t see any critters in the road, but the shriek of tiny frogs grew more intense the closer we got to the park entrance, so we turned down the dirt path. The ditch just to the left was the origin of the cacophony, so we approached.
Our lights revealed a small world of activity. Spotted salamanders swam sinuously, and peepers perched on grassy hummocks. A few swam as well, seeming to glow against the backdrop of the water. Equating our presence with the looming threat of some giant predator, the chirping all but stopped under our observation. We moved away, letting the vernal pool fade into darkness, and the sound resumed.
We returned long enough to get a few dim videos of the teeming life in this glorified, ephemeral puddle, then walked carefully home. The visual evidence of peepers, paradoxically tiny compared to their giant voices, and the silent sensuality of the salamanders, made the night seem friendlier, more full, and more alive.
Courtney Naliboff teaches, writes, and plays music on North Haven. She may be reached at courtney.naliboff@gmail.com.
