Miki, our youngest field spaniel, is two years old today. I took him out for an evening stroll around our yard, at about 7 pm. We got down to the end of our driveway, and he suddenly went into an alert posture, staring down the hill intently, trying to figure out what that loud and persistent noise was. The sound was coming from a broad swath of land below us, basically the whole bottom of the valley.
Miki had never heard this sound before.
Frogs.
By the thousands, freshly-minted frogs were singing their hearts out, trying to find a mate. Tonight must mark the interval between the first rains intense enough to get the steam flowing and the age of tadpoles when they first crawl out of the water.
We haven't heard more than a few frogs for something like four or five years.
Welcome back, frogs...
