A week ago we had record warmth: 75 degrees on one day. Not bad for the first week of February. The local western chorus frogs got spring fever and met each other in ponds and wet roadside ditches. Things happened like in Vegas. And what happens in ditches, stays in ditches.
I found a muddy roadside pothole loaded with frog eggs; handfuls of baby Pseudacris triseriata.
“April is the cruellest month, breeding. Lilacs out of the dead land,” wrote The Waste Land poet T.S. Eliot. Tell that to these frog larvae that will never survive until April, their water filled embryonic sacs ruptured by ice crystals as sharp as stilettos. Don't get me wrong T.S., frogs love puddle-filled wastelands but chill out guys can't you wait awhile. The icy cold weather is forecast to last several more days.
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