What goes around comes around, especially here at Shalom Acres, our little hobby farm in Greenville where an octogenarian who once caught frogs as a 12-year-old now does so again.
These days, though, I brandish a camera instead of a net.
Seven decades on, why still the fascination with these creatures whose forebears once hopped at the feet of dinosaurs?
The answer is elusive, but I’m not alone in admiring occupants of the little pond outside our front door. Art, literature, and folklore have portrayed frogs for better or worse since time out of mind – from those that plagued Biblical Egypt to the lovable Kermit of our own era.
How they find our tiny pond, slightly bigger than a bathtub, is a mystery, since they must jump many an acre to get here.
Once arrived, they spend their days in submerged stealth, each one a pair of eyes breaking the surface to track neon-bright dragonflies.
Their allure is a mystery, but there’s satisfaction in contemplating frogs. Perhaps it’s the magic of their metamorphosis from fishlike tadpoles; perhaps it’s the somnolent stalking of airborne prey amid the water lilies.
Some tout frogs for no particular reason. The actress Cameron Diaz put it succinctly: “I’d kiss a frog even if there was no chance of a Prince Charming popping out of it. I love frogs.”
Culture has long been interested in them, as well.
Down the generations they have variously been cast as symbols of abundance, fertility, licentiousness, good fortune, and renewal.
Some societies saw them as carriers of curative medicinal fluids, while others viewed them warily as messengers of witchcraft.
Mark Twain, prone to writing about frogs, used them as vehicles for dispensing his down-home advice. Counseling that it’s wise to prioritize difficult tasks, he once noted, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
Knowing that we eat no frogs at Shalom Acres, ours are bold in declaring themselves.
Deep in these sultry summer nights, one bullfrog tends to wake us with resonant bellowing.
Mating season is over, so what he trumpets we cannot say – perhaps it’s just the primal announcement voiced by all life on our good green Earth: “I am.”
Or maybe he’s quoting the circumspect Kermit, who once avowed, “I’m not gonna spend my life in a swamp catching flies with my tongue.”
Kermit’s froggy assertion reminds us that no matter the smallness of our current station, fulfillment can come from looking beyond it.
So thought the 17th Century haiku poet Kikahu, who urged us to do just that:
Come come! Come out!
From bogs old frogs command the dark
And look… the stars.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
