I listen for them every year. Every first week of March. Nights still chilly, but days getting warmer. And they're usually warm enough. Just warm enough to coax them into action.
This year, right on time, two nights ago, I heard the first frog. One, tiny, lone trill, cautiously ascending the scale. It was the very first frog I had heard anywhere at all this year, and I was totally and ridiculously pleased that I'd heard it at my own house.
As far as the dogs and I wander along the roads, it was entirely possible that we would have found frogs somewhere farther afield. But not this year. This year, the first trilling chorus frog, above all else the harbinger of spring, showed up right here at Goldengreene.
Today I have heard a handful of others in a couple of different places. In fact, sometimes in rather unlikely places. One spot was along the marshy fringe of a pond beside one of our favorite walking roads. That's predictable enough. But the other spot was in someone's front yard along our own gravel road. There must be a drainage area or a big puddle of some kind in there somewhere, and the frogs had found it.
They make me so happy. At this time of year, with everything still completely brown and gray and dusty, the hope of spring can seem like only a whisper. Even to a person without sight, the patina of the world manifests as colorless this time of year. The grayness seeps into my soul. Nothing smells good, and even the soundscape is boring and bland.
It's a time of waiting, of hoping for hope.
Until, that is, those trilling frogs show up. I listen for them, long for them, and always, always smile when I hear them.
Spring is coming. Finally and thank goodness. It hasn't really been a hard winter, but it sure has been a long one.
Learn about frogs that live in Kansas and hear their croaking: https://www.aza.org/frogwatch-usa-kansas?locale=en
