May 10, 2005

• Hey, sfred- nice post! ))) Mind you don't interrupt any of those amphibi-orgies - amphibians need all the help they can get (especially in the Centre of the Universe- heh).
• And be grateful! When I was a kid in the '70s growing up in the countryside near Ottawa we used to hear loads of peeper frogs (the background of that recording you linked to) and toads and bullfrogs (check out that "song"!) every night, but then in the '80s--thanks to acid rain--they all but disappeared. Now they seem to be making a comeback and I glad [you] hear it. :-)
• Oh, hell, frogs chirp and croak me to sleep every night. Two of my favorite sounds in the whole world are evening frogs and evening cicadas. Another is the rattle of ice in my rocks glass. Another is when somebody says "Hey, Matt, do you want this big bag of cash? I'm not using it." Still another is when Mrs. Tool puts her ankles behind her ears and calls me Mr. Greenjeans. Yet another...
• I am happy to hear them, noisy as they are. My favorite common frog call is from the green frog. Sounds like nothing so much as a big rubber band. I'm always surprised as to how much wildlife there is here in TO. We've got only toads, but also garter snakes to eat them.
• Hopkin reference in three...two...
• Countryside is the noisiest place in the world, often, if you listen -- if 'tisn't frogs, it's owls or crickets or katydids or cattle lowing or some damn fool with a chainsaw or a leafblower.
• Garter snakes too! Where are you in the GTA? That's awsome and encouraging (though garters are like rats without wings in a way). My favourite pet when I was a kid was a garter snake named "Frankie". I didn't yet know what a garter was and he never figured out that I wasn't a snake. Awesome pet.
• "unrestrained amphibian sex",,(drools)
• Peepers! Me loves the sound of peepers in the spring. you don't get that much here in the desert
• Oh...toads and frogs; will they never cease their public sexual exploits? Just today, in the elevator there were five or six who'd obviously been to one of those...dance clubs, doing those awful club drugs...I had to avert my eyes!
• I <3 moneyjane.
• Bufo americanus is my new superhero name. Even tho I'm not American. Or a Bufo.
• You'd probably only get as far as "Bufo americ" silkscreened on the front of your unitard. Oh, dear.
• At least it would help me get it on the right way round. Kind of like labelling boots 'L' and 'R'.
• No no no. You have the word BUFO and the rest of the unitard in stars & stripes. Obvious. And it would have warts.
• That fire lasers.
• Exactly.
• Jerry Junior - I'm in North York. I've seen garter snakes and toads of both the super hero and normal variety in a couple of parks, but usually in Downsview Dells.
• My favorite night time noise makers are mocking birds. One place I lived, one had staked out the tree outside my bedroom window and performed a half hour concert every night starting at midnight. Since I was on the edge of sleep, the "music" really focused my listening. The bird had a great program - immitated the usual blue jays and sparrows, etc., but also did a pretty good frog and what I think were parakeet noises, though it might have been parrots sice there were flocks of those which had liberated themselves from cages and seemed to make a good living. He even seemed to sing the cadances of human speech.
• How can you resist the sound of nature?! I love those sounds. One of my favorites is red-winged blackbirds, they make this amazing trilling sound--it's wonderful. But nothing beats hearing a loon in the dead quite of dawn.
• Oh, yes, Darshon. RWBs mean summertime here. Stupid robins freeze, Meadowlarks signal spring, but RWBs are summertime hot hot hot OK-KA-LEEE! damn starlings
• When it rains in the lane you can see toads are on the march again bounding like wee madmen across or down the roads until they reach the lower woods and there, under the ladyfern they settle in to thrive beside the burn.
• Toad Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse squeeze under the rickety door and sit, full of satisfaction, in a man's house? You clamber toward me on your four corners -- right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot. I love you for being a toad, for crawling like a Japanese wrestler, and for not being frightened. I put you in my purse hand, not shutting it, and set you down outside directly under every star. A jewel in your head? Toad, you've put one in mine, a tiny radiance in a dark place. -- Norman MacCaig
• *applause* Marge Piercy Toad Dreams That afternoon the dream of the toads rang through the elms by Little River and affected the thoughts of men, though they were not conscious that they heard it.--Henry Thoreau The dream of toads: we rarely credit what we consider lesser life with emotions big as ours, but we are easily distracted, abstracted. People sit nibbling before television's flicker watching ghosts chase balls and each other while the skunk is out risking grisly death to cross the highway to mate; while the fox scales the wire fence where it knows the shotgun lurks to taste the sweet blood of a hen. Birds are greedy little bombs bursting to give voice to appetite. I had a cat who died of love. Dogs trail their masters across con- tinents. We are far too busy to be starkly simple in passion. We will never dream the intense wet spring lust of the toads.
• Tender Is the Toad Tender is the Toad The amphibian alter ego of my love. Eyes bulging out at the world Searching for reason, for explanation. Tongue flickering out in an effort To taste his new beginning, He hops about aimlessly knowing he is locked in a prison of his own creation. Faintly he remembers the Prince within Faded memories of another existence They flicker on and off before his closed eyes reminding him Prodding him to discover who he really is. One moment he knows, then it is gone. Still he knows it is there--the answer. He will search, he will trust, he will hope that it is there. Tender is the Toad, the amphibian alter ego of my love. Copyright © Terry L. Forney 2003
• they are cool to the touch when picked up or put down most folk don't like them very much because of all their warts and spots but I think toads are rather nice they do less gnawing than the mice they are less frightening than the rats they've bright gold eyes that remind me of cats