Frogs and More Frogs

Time to talk about frogs.

For years, we’ve collected frogs of various sizes and material. They are spread about the house and Trish has a collection in her room. If we didn’t have enough of them from our own acquisitive efforts, friends have upped the ante adding to our collection. As I write this, there’s a little green frog with a gold crown resting at the base of my monitor.

Early in our relationship, before we started the collection, we began calling each other sapo and sapa, Spanish for frog. We see them as creatures of transformation.

When we moved into our current house nine years ago, the frog collection came along. On our first night in the house, as we set up our offices, we heard tapping sounds against the windows as if someone was standing in the dark trying to get our attention, and going from one window to the next. Then we spotted them: tree frogs! Lots of them. They smacked against the windows and stayed there, waiting for moths and other insects to fly toward the light in our rooms. Their large red eyes seemed to watch us. We didn’t mind. We took it as a good sign.

I was familiar with tiny tree frogs about the size of the tip of my index finger, which we saw frequently at our old house. But some of these tree frogs were ‘monsters,’ some as large as my fist. A bit of research found that they were Cuban tree frogs, a larger variety, that entered the Florida keys and South Florida in the 1920s.

Within days, our three cats discovered the tree frogs and the frogs discovered the cats. Some frogs died in the ensuing confrontation, the rest migrated. Our windows became silent at night. But a few years ago, the frogs came back and have remained as nightly window dressing. Every evening, they leap to the windows in our offices as we sit at our computers.

Somehow, frogs occasionally sneak into the house. We don’t know how they get in. But we always take it as a sign that something good is going to happen and, if we find one dead in the house, a not so positive sign. Two instances come immediately to mind.

In 1997, we came home from a vacation and found a dead frog in the family room. All three of us just looked at it, then Megan blurted, “Oh my God, this can’t be a good sign.” We were thinking, death in the family, because the frog was found in the family room. Two days later, my dad died.

In February of 2003, a month when we don’t usually see a lot of tree frogs, Trish hollered from the back of the house, “A frog, I just found a beautiful, healthy frog!” She picked it up and put it outside. We both wondered if its presence in the house portended something good. Later that afternoon, she received a call that she’d been nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award.

So the other night there were five frogs on my window! I’m waiting….