I forgot to tell you what happened a couple weeks ago. One morning I got up around 4:30 and I heard what sounded like a sick/confused/loony bird outside our kitchen window. Man, he kept making a weird noise and kept making a weird noise and kept--

Then awhile later after Tom arrived home from working night shift he asked, "Did you hear that strange bird out there?" I said, "I know... he's been at it for two whole hours. What's up with that?"

Alas...... we are such suburbanites...

So that evening after Tom left for work I opened our kitchen window to air things out since I'd painted our dining room earlier and wow! A whole loud Hallelujah Chorus of sick/confused/loony birds filled the air. But immediately I realized--and said aloud--"Peepers! Those are Spring Peepers!"

So I opened the window wider and stood there looking into the darkening meadow and smiled. My very first peepers! I'd only read about them in books and perhaps heard some at times in movies. But there they were in my very own backyard.

They are cool. They sound rather like tiny policemen blowing whistles to two or three beats. They are different than crickets--and they are loud!

This afternoon I pruned the plants on the 'lake side' of our house and I could hear no peepers (they only perform in the evenings), but I did hear our resident marsh frogs as they click-clicked rhythmically. What an odd sound... From a distance I glimpsed slowly moving forms and bubbling in all the water and with their noises, well, they sounded rather like something from a sci-fi flick. Eerie, even in the sunny silence.

I know... too much Stargate Atlantis.

Anyway, first we had such early, early robins and now we have peepers. Life is blissful in the country.