Sunday, April 06, 2008

Kind of a Wild Life

It's starting to feel like we're breaking out of the winter freeze. Last night we opened the bedroom window to air out the painting fumes, and so all night I could hear two different kinds of frogs croaking from the pond about 100 feet from our house--it sounds like we're surrounded by them! There seem to be hundreds of little ones, which we will find in various places all summer including near the lights at our front door. I think they are drawn there by the easy meal of flying insects that come to the lights at night. Then there are those that croak with a deep, huge voice, and sound like they must each be a foot across or so. Once in a while all the frogs would simultaneously fall silent. I don't know if there was a coyote or heron that kept haunting them, but every time they did, even if I was almost asleep, I had to laugh. It was amazing how suddenly they would stop and then start again.
Then this morning, not only were the frogs still croaking, but I could hear various bird calls. Without looking out the window, I could almost imagine it being a jungle environment with all the animal sounds going on. I tried counting the bird calls, and thought that I came up with seven different calls before I got too confused to continue.
On the way to church I had a phenomenal experience: I drove right past a bald eagle taking off in flight from the side of the road. It flew up right in front of me, such that I had to brake to keep from hitting it. I was probably within five feet of it; it was almost surreal to have the white-brown-white pattern come up in startling closeness and reality in front of me. It was a huge bird, with huge, distinguishable feathers! Definitely amazing.
Still, I pondered how much I would be likely to tell people at church about it; not very likely, because there was too much other excitement going on. Our pastor and a young member of our congregation had just come back from a missions trip to Russia, and that same pastor was speaking about his upcoming sabbatical. In all of that, I forgot for the while about the eagle.
I went out tonight to bring Tim in, and the air felt a bit balmier than usual, and the frogs were back at their constant croaking. All in all, it was an eventful, animal-filled day. I'm thrilled to think that summer will be coming soon, we'll be able to keep the windows open more and be lulled to sleep by croaking and wakened by bird calls.

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