Shouldn't…but Do

Rounding a street corner on Walkabout, I heard the first frogs of spring at 4:43 AM several weeks ago.  We call them “spring peepers.”

As the weather swung between warm spells and cold snaps, the song of those solitary individuals, and eventually quartets, came and went as they somehow detected me on the street some distance from their marshy greenbelt.

At about the same time, two early birds, robins in this case, took up the traditional roosting spots where I find them year after year.  For anyone interested, that would be a particular mailbox post and a tree down the block.

Nowadays, spring is in full swing.  Forsythia bush and magnolia trees are blooming and the 5:00 AM robins quickly give way to a delightfully discordant mashup of birdsong—an audio veil that transports any common morning into something more exotic.

And the peepers?  It is prime time.  Early spring rehearsals have led to a tightly interwoven tapestry of sound, a background thrum that is both impenetrable mystery and a well-remembered song of childhood.  Eternity calls nightly—and in those early morning hours, along the greenbelt in an unremarkable neighborhood that could just as easily be yours.