"I Have Always Liked Frogs" (Little Green Notebook)

A lusty, bodacious call to action

Photo by me, Mary Dansak

Quick announcement: For those who are local to the Auburn, Alabama area, I will be at Auburn Oil Company Booksellers tonight, 6:30 CT, at an “In Conversation With” event. I’ll be talking about my writing life and the creative process. I’d love to see you there! Bring a friend; come for wine and conversation.

In certain groups of folks, if you say the words, “I have always liked frogs,” a quiet hush will fall. And then, like a well-choreographed flashmob, a chorus will answer, “I like the looks of frogs, and their outlook, and especially the way they get together in wet places on warm nights and sing about sex.”

These are the well-loved and oft-quoted words of famed naturalist Archie Carr, found in the chapter entitled “The Paradox Frog” in his book, The Windward Road, Adventures of a Naturalist on Remote Caribbean Shores (1955, University of Florida Press).

In this chapter, Carr describes traipsing around on the island of Trinidad. He writes eloquently about the turtles, humans, frogs, and other marvels he encounters while searching for the paradox frog, Pseudis paradoxis.

The paradox frog is so named because it defies two rules of its order. First, it remains in the water after metamorphosis, and second, it is smaller in its adult frog stage than in its portly tadpole stage. Carr pondered why the paradox frog sings at all, as the purpose of frogs’ calls is to lure females back to the breeding waters. In the case of the paradox frog, the females were already there with the males.

Carr eventually reached a pond well populated by paradox frogs, whose voices he carefully identified from the chorus of thousands of others. He wrote, “Then I shut off the light and stood there with my odd fulfillment, listening as the Pseudis chorus closed in around me. I stood like a shitepoke roost in the thin dark – a full professor in the prime of life – with my navel in the pond and five children back home going through their shoes; hearing the rare song and stowing it away, wondering why a water frog with his females there floating beside him under the moon should sing on in the dark, through the ages.”

This morning, I pored over Carr’s words, recalling childhood when my dad used to read his books aloud to us. I mused on prowling naturalists with no cell phones, no updated field guides, and in this case, no helpful maps. I pondered the world where learned professors gathered vital stories from ten-year-old children who lived their lives immersed in natural cycles. This was the world of Archie Carr.

I had frogs on the brain today because of a recent post by our local news reporter Elizabeth White. She shared a photograph of a five-legged frog a family found in Beauregard.

Likely, the abnormality was caused by the parasitic trematode, Ribeiroia ondatrae. This flatworm makes use of frogs, birds, and freshwater snails in its life-cycle. In a nutshell, the larvae infect tadpoles causing limb abnormalities, the affected frogs are easy prey for water birds, the larvae grow and reproduce inside the birds’ guts, the birds deliver fertilized Ribeiroia eggs to the water with their feces, and the glorious life of Ribeiroia cycles ever onward. I’ve left off some bizarre details, including that the growing larvae feed on the snails’ reproductive organs, but you get the picture.

While these trematode-induced abnormalities are a naturally occurring event, frogs and other amphibians face extreme challenges with habitat destruction and degradation, environmental pollution, and climate change the leading culprits.

Data from the second Global Amphibian Assessment (published October 2022), which evaluated 8,011 species, show a steady and continued decline in amphibians worldwide. About a third of all amphibian species are precipitously close to extinction.

Even if you don’t like critters, this is concerning. Amphibians are our canaries-in-the-coal-mine. As indicator species, being sensitive to pollution and environmental stressors, we should heed the warnings of our world becoming a hostile place for these animals.

It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?

We can’t all be Archie Carrs, prowling and collecting primary data, writing stories from eyewitnesses about the challenges critters face. We can’t all be activists, like those who spoke out recently in Homewood against a development that threatened vernal pools, the breeding grounds for spotted salamanders, causing the builders to change their plans (Rah and Thank You!).

We can take steps to protect amphibians in our own spaces, taking care not to move rocks or build dams in riverbeds; providing wet, covered areas in our own yards; and reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Still, individual actions are but a blip compared to the strength of vigorously enforced environmental regulations.

What a relief that we all have access to the most powerful tool available for protecting wild things and places: voting.

Right now, we are seeing a cascade of reversals of regulations that provided a modicum of relief to wildlife. These include the misleadingly titled “Save Our Forests Act,” dismantling the mission of the EPA, allowing unregulated logging in our National Forests, gutting the budget for our National Parks, and more.

I urge everyone who finds themself, like Archie Carr, standing in the midst of nature and pondering its beauty and mystery, to vote in accordance with your environmental values at every opportunity. Meanwhile, calls to our representatives are tallied, and they do count for something.

Enjoy these spring nights and the bawdy, bodacious frogs who are out there singing about sex with all their hearts, with no notion a’tall of their own decline. May their love songs be our call to action.

My book, Box Turtles, Hooligans, and Love Sweet Love, is available from me (see marydansak.com), on Amazon, or you can request that your local library or book store order it. Here are five reasons why I’m confidant you will like my book.

1. You made it this far, meaning you have an appreciation of nature. You’ll marvel with me at the wonders the natural world offers.

2. The essays are short, about 800 words each, and fit perfectly into your busy life.

3. The book features a very nice box turtle on the cover, and makes for wonderful decor. Wrap a ribbon around it and voila! It’s gift-wrapped.

4. You will learn unusual and entertaining information about animals, plants, seasons, and other natural wonders in an easily digestible way.

5. By absorbing some of what you read in this book, you will never run out of topics for conversation.

The book costs $20 (or $10 for the ebook). It will last longer than two bottles of wine, and unlike a tank of gas in your car, you can pass it around, talk about it with friends, and return to it over and over.

If I didn’t think you would love this book, I wouldn’t push it on you. If any of you hearing or reading this have read the book, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you left a review or comment here, on Amazon, on Goodreads, on Facebook, on Storygraph, or in my messages. Sometimes folks need to hear it from someone other than the writer.

Carry on! It’s spring, the frogs are singing, and the green is ever so ridiculously green here in Alabama!