Ask Wednesday: Have you had a visitation of frogs?

Up against the garage door

In joy and sorrow

By Morris Dean

All of a sudden, about three weeks ago, we started to see a huge number (dozens? hundreds?) of tiny, dark frogs in our yard, right around the house, both front and back. When I say tiny, I mean on the order of half an inch long, nose to tail in squatting position.
    There's a drainage pound out back of our house, but frogs have commonly taken up residence in our yard, even in the gutters, although I can't tell you how they got up there.
    And they are so lively! Finally, just a few days ago now, I make a [barely passable] movie to show one of them in action, using my Nikon Coolpix P300.

    Photographing these little critters was a challenge. They are extremely alert and quick to hop away at an approach (although the one in the movie was much slower off the mark than usual).
    To get as close-up a shot as possible, I inserted a 55-200 mm lens into my Nikon DSLR and positioned myself about five feet away from the subject. The following photos were cropped significantly:

    As you see, some of the frogs seem less dark, which I really hadn't noticed until I went out with my cameras.
    I have tried to be careful not to step on or unduly startle these creatures. I noticed that they would jump against the house or the garage door or a column if that was the direction away from me (as illustrated in the movie), and I didn't want to cause them to be injured.
    I moved with especially great care and deliberation when attempting to photograph them. I love these little creatures, and I'm sure part of the reason is that I have meditated on the reported words of Jesus Christ about what we do "unto the least among us" [especially non-human animals, although Jesus didn't seem to consider them – not that his much later chroniclers can be assumed to have understood the man], and Robert Frost's poem about the "considerable speck" that displayed some mind:

A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink
When something strange about it made me think,
This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,
But unmistakably a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt--
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn't want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
It faltered: I could see it hesitate;
Then in the middle of the open sheet
Cower down in desperation to accept
Whatever I accorded it of fate.
I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
Collectivistic regimenting love
With which the modern world is being swept.
But this poor microscopic item now!
Since it was nothing I knew evil of
I let it lie there till I hope it slept.

I have a mind myself and recognize
Mind when I meet with it in any guise
No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind.

How sad it was, then, early last Saturday morning, when I walked off the wet lawn and, to remove the worst of the grass off my shoes, stomped my feet onto a flat rock, seeing too late the black speck of frog that was racing across the stone. I couldn't stop my foot – the horrid deed was done.

1-1/8" long from nose to tips of hind legs

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean