Tag: frogs

Mud Moon

K. Schall DeYong

It’s this time of year more than any other that our four clean-cut seasons just don’t do the trick. Anyone who pays close attention knows that the earth doesn’t change like the flip of a switch. In these strange, soggy weeks it is clear: we are neither in winter nor in spring.

These are the days that are neither too cold to bear nor warm enough to stretch out and sigh. The temperature changes so quick each day that you can’t wear the same coat at midday that you do in the evening. The trees remain leafless, but they’re all budding. Flowers are nowhere to be seen, but the grass is turning greener. This isn’t winter as we’ve gotten to know it, but we know better than to call it spring. This is a season of its own, a totally different thing. This is the season of mud.

Everywhere you look, the earth is in-between. The mud is the one thing you can count on. Beneath the greening grass, the ice is cracking. The cold, hard ground is beginning to give. It softens. Water seeps up and out of the ground almost endlessly. And it rains all the time—even more water, falling always from the sky. Wet, wet, earth. Meadows and soccer fields take on the look of a marsh. You can imagine frogs living in these puddles, herons perching on a dry patch. It is a soggy time.

The gloom of these watery days isn’t dreary enough to hide the magic that they’re full of. The squish of the mud beneath your shoes means a ground chock-full of the ingredients for growth. The water is just the beginning. Life itself began in the waters of the oceans. It only makes sense that this new spring should begin with a flooding of the fields to set off the new round of life. Winter is over. This is the time of the Mud Moon.

Frozen Frogs

K. Schall DeYong

In the rain and snow, a hush seems to fall over the neighborhoods. The leaves aren’t there to rustle in the breezes, and the stray cats and little squirrels hide away. The people, too, are huddled in their dens, curled up in some quiet corner.

There’s one particular critter who hides especially well: the spring peeper. These frogs are native to Missouri, and they’re strange creatures. They snuggle into winter shelters of leaf piles, logs, and tree trunks, and won’t make a sound all winter. Along with a handful of other frog species, the spring peeper survives winter by going completely dormant–and even freezing through.

During their frozen slumber, the spring peeper is saved only by glycogen, a natural sugar in the frogs’ blood that acts as an antifreeze. This is just enough to keep ice crystals from forming in their vital organs. Its breath and heart have slowed to an almost undetectable rate, and the energy needed to keep these systems running at all comes from the same sugar. It ferments in their bodies and provides just enough energy to keep them alive.

The spring peeper runs out of glycogen stores right around the time that the first hint of warmth creeps into the air. So in the last days of winter, the spring peeper will miraculously thaw and awaken like the pet project of some mad scientist. This is where it gets its name: in that season of uncertainty, halfway between winter and spring, it emerges from its slumber and utters its call—a sequence of short peeps. The call of the spring peeper is said to be a sure sign that winter is relinquishing its bitter grip, and spring is on the way.

In the meantime, they sleep alongside the warmblooded hibernators in their shelters, waiting. And we wonder at a tiny frog who, for all our strength and smarts and stamina, would outlast us on a cold winter night.