One evening after a day of rain I walked to the woods near my house. I was in a bad mood and I thought maybe going for a walk would help.
It was spring so I wasn’t surprised to hear some frogs as I stepped off the pavement and onto the trail. But as I walked down the first hill into a low point in the woods the sound suddenly engulfed me, and was loud. It was a chorus of gray tree frogs.
None of their voices were quite the same, but they were all singing the same basic song. Some were right in front of me, some on each side, and others arrayed in the distance. Their trills echoed through the woods.
These singing frogs are little guys. And they are guys. Less than 2 inches in size. The males sing to attract mates. But they weren’t in the pond and swamp like the spring peepers and chorus frogs. They were everywhere in the woods. And that was what made this frog concert seem different.
I wasn’t the only one to appreciate it. Another person walking in the woods stopped at the bottom of the hill as well to listen and savor the performance. The male frog chorus is there trying to attract lady frogs and in the process they attracted two female humans who also appreciated their charms.
After a while I recorded a short snippet on my phone in order to remember the encounter and continued on my way. The sound receded into the distance as I left the woods. That’s when I realized my bad mood was gone.
