We get all kinds of varmints this time of year: flies, wasps, spiders, June bugs, and crickets. Especially crickets. In fact, I call our foyer the Sacred Cricket Burial Ground. I'm not kidding. One day I swept up 30 or more in there.Each summer seems to spotlight a different insect. 2004 was the June bug summer, 2005 starred crickets, 2006 saw the fly swarms and 2007 it was wasps. This year it's not insects, it's baby frogs...
Until around April I'd never even heard a frog around here, and then it was only one. I don't know how why, but we're suddenly inundated with baby frogs. And all the rain we're getting really brings them out, too. Then there's our cat, Lowrider, who loves to catch them and bring them in the house—unharmed but scared—where we have to catch them and let them go. Just an hour ago I went downstairs to turn out the lights and lock the doors and I found three little frogs in the foyer. There's one up here in the master bedroom, but he got away and I'll probably never find him. I hope he doesn't wind up like the poor, dried up little guy that I found under the coffee table.
I like frogs. When I was a kid I used to catch them. One time I caught about 50 baby water frogs and put them in a shoe box. During the night they somehow got out and my mom about killed me when she woke up to find all of them plastered to the windows. I'm predicting that in about a month, both the yard and the house will be filled with the sounds of frogs chirping.
