Tag: frog

Noise Cancellation

Before I left for my getaway, I was having trouble sleeping at night. This is not because I am worried about anything or because I am in any pain. It all had to do with a horrible, loud, annoying noise that kept me tossing and turning and seriously thinking about purchasing ear plugs or a white noise machine or a straight jacket. This loud noise wasn’t anything man made. It was coming from a creature of Mother Nature.

Our backyard butts up to a small lake and behind the lake is a relatively untouched nature preserve. Normally I love living like Snow White. The diverse nature we observe here is truly stunning and fascinating. We get rafters of turkeys (that is the correct term for a group of turkeys, btw) walking through our backyard all of the time. We get all sorts of birds – herons, eagles, hawks, ducks and woodpeckers. We see deer, rabbits, armadillos, possums, raccoons and alligators, on a frequent basis. Normally, these lovely critters act just as fun eye candy and we have a mutual respect for our respective places as creatures on this beautiful Earth. We all keep a healthy distance from each other and we live in happy symbiosis.

Mating season can get quite loud here, though. I thought mating season would be over by now, but for a few days before I left on my getaway, there was a very insistent, loud, demanding, horny as hell creature who just wouldn’t shut up. Whoever, whatever it was, sounded like he was right outside of our bedroom window. My frustrated, exhausted husband got up once, in the middle of the night, looking to see if it were squirrels or alligators or a new species of bird whose call we hadn’t heard before, sitting right outside of our window, insistently calling out for a mate. I got up to help him, but we just couldn’t find the sneaky source. We rustled in the bushes, our fears of finding something dangerous, with sharp, gnash-y teeth, being abated by our desperate need for sleep. We turned on all of our spotlights, so bright, you would have thought we were a prison, looking desperately for a fugitive prisoner. The noisemaker continued through all of this fuss, mocking us, as he carried on with his insistent screeches and howls.

I had forgotten about this annoyance when I was on my trip. I kept remarking about how well I had slept on my trip, attributing it to the mattress pads or the hotel pillows, not realizing that it was really the serene silence that I had been missing, that was helping me get such sound sleep. As I eagerly turned in last night, excited to be in my own surroundings, in my own familiar bed, as I shut my eyes, ready for sweet, dreamy slumber, my noisy, aggravating nemesis starting his siren song AGAIN. UGH! I had completely forgotten about this pest, on my sweet escape. Last night I got spotty sleep at best.

This morning, as I was grumpily making up our bed, the noise started up again. This was unusual. It had been mostly a night thing . . . a nightmare, for sure. Once again, it sounded like it was coming from our window sliders. In desperation, I got my phone’s flashlight and I looked all over the window, trying to follow the sound. I finally found my nemesis. He wasn’t large. He wasn’t scary. He wasn’t feathered and he didn’t have sharp teeth. He was actually kind of cute and innocent. He reminded me of Kermit . . . Kermit the frog. I set him free. I set us both free, I hope. Tonight will tell if he decides to come back. . . . I guess it isn’t easy being green.

Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog

Earlier this week, I had gone to a beautiful nursery by my house.  I wanted to find some fall weather plants to replace some of my annuals that have gotten quite straggly.  I love nurseries.  It’s like walking along in the Secret Garden with so much to discover.  The vibrant colors, the lovely fragrances, and the plants that are so symmetrical and perfect, it is hard to believe that they are natural, are just some of the treasures to see and experience in a garden.  And of course, there are also the butterflies and the birds and the unusual insects that have smartly decided to call these beautiful sanctuaries their home.

Unfortunately, I made an unplanned kidnapping of one of those critters.  I had put the purchased plants on all of the unoccupied seats of my car, drove them home and deposited them near to the spots that I wanted to plant them in.  I then went to pick up my daughter from school.  She and I were have a lively conversation about the day’s activities, until my daughter started screaming loudly.  In that split second, I wondered if she had seen something that I had not seen and I wondered if we were about to be wrecked.  She excitedly told me that something slimy had just landed on her feet.  She didn’t have to give any more explanation, because a relatively large tree frog started landing just about everywhere in the car, like Spiderman sticking to all surfaces, sideways and upside down.  I quickly pulled the car over and eventually and enthusiastically, we were able to guide our new friend out of the car and on to the grass, luckily with no harm caused to any of us.

I felt really sorry for our little buddy frog friend, though.  I realized that he had just been cast out of the Garden of Eden.  He was definitely not “moving on up” by being deposited in a lackluster clump of grass on the side of the road.  What a bummer day for this little guy!  Hopefully, using his best natural instincts and inner guidance, he will find his way back to his beautiful, heavenly home.  I’m just grateful for another funny story in my life, that has a hopeful ending.