Frogtime

September seems to be the time for frogs in the garden. All along the stone walls, in the Brick Path garden(1), there are little dark green leopard frogs, spotted with brown , and with two handsome gold lines down their backs. When I come near, these hop importantly out of the way, into the tangle of collapsing plants at the back of the beds. I like having them in the garden – they eat bugs – but there’s no way of letting them know that.

The best frog, though, this year, is an extremely small tree frog that has made his home on the Zephyrine Drouhin. This is the incredibly generous and forgiving rose-colored climber on the porch wall. It’s an awful spot, roots cramped between the porch foundations and the cellar door, on a wall that definitely faces north, but this rose, may her tribes increase, doesn’t seem to mind. This year she has sent a long, graceful shoot diagonally up the trellis, about ten feet long. A few days ago I examined her leaves, some of which were laced by a caterpillar, and I saw the tiny frog.

He’s small enough to fit very comfortably sideways on a rose leaf, and he sits with his front feet tucked neatly underneath him, as though he were carrying a muff. He’s a very pale greenish tan, nearly translucent, with dark eyes, each with a short dark stripe that goes directly through it. On his back is a vague dim pattern, like drowned islands seen from above. The first time, not knowing he was there, I scared him, and I watched him leap seven or eight inches – seven or eight times his length – to another leaf, stretching out his strange rubbery extra-terrestrial fingers and toes to clutch the next perch. I leaned down to look at him, and then he sat motionless, the fingers hidden beneath his belly, his dark striped eyes open, and his pale throat palpitating, very fast, a quick hurrying rhythm of pulse.

I watched him for a long time, to see if the rythym would slow when he was less alarmed, but watching a wild animal is like the physics principle (Heidegger’s?) : by watching them you change them, so I’ve never found out whether or not the pulse would slow.

He’s been there, somewhere on the rose trellis, each day when I come out, though sometimes it takes a little while to find him. Yesterday he was on the trellis itself, sitting completely still and composed, clamped ont o the perpendicular surface, his pale head facing straight up, the drowned islands on his back, his bright unnatural eyes slightly lidded.
I couldn’t see the pulse.