Tag: spring peepers

Peeper Season

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Calling Spring Peepers - Pseudacris crucifer

“Betcha can’t eat just one”?

When spring rolls around–and our spring, here in New Jersey, has been very cold and wet so far–my editor, Susan, calls me up to let me listen to the chorus of spring peepers who come out of hibernation and sing in her back yard. These are charming little frogs who whoop it up for a week or two and then disappear. Mating season, I guess.

When I was a boy, my friend Ellen–showing off!–accidentally swallowed a spring peeper. Right on my back porch: my mother would’ve been appalled, had she seen that. I’m afraid I laughed. “What’s the matter–got a frog in your throat?”

Well, I’ve heard the peepers on my phone. I wish they’d show up here, but somehow they don’t. Maybe they don’t know Ellen moved away a long time ago.

God’s Stuff: Spring Peepers

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Before I get into any low-down, dreary nooze–if I get into it at all today–here’s a sure harbinger of spring: you can hear the spring peepers.

My editor, Susan, has a patch of boggy ground next door; and when the peepers come out of hibernation to mate and lay eggs, Susan calls me on the phone so I can hear the peepers singing.

God has not troubled Himself with giving them a calendar; He has created them so that they never miss their time.

God’s stuff always works. It’s our stuff that has all the problems.

Mr. Nature: Spring Peepers, the Next Generation

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

You’ve heard the peepers calling–some of you, in your own back yards–and they’ve laid their eggs. Time for them to hatch!

Mr. Nature here–and watch God’s stuff work. Time-lapse photography allows us to watch the embryos developing in the eggs until they’re ready to hatch out and swim away. In another month or two they’ll be frogs.

If you watch closely you can just make out some exceedingly tiny creatures swimming here and there. A newly-hatched spring peeper tadpole is about the size of the fingernail on a human baby’s finger; so these other critters, whatever they are, are just barely visible without a microscope.

Life! God planted it all over the planet.

P.S.–Help me maintain this blog today without writing about the cotton-pickin’ coronavirus! And no, I absolutely do not no way care what Alyssa Milano has to say about it. I don’t care that she was in a movie once. I won a spelling bee in junior high school. So what? Let’s stay real.

Mr. Nature: Spring Peepers

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Spring is well on its way; and that means these little frogs, spring peepers, will be coming out hibernation and calling for mates. This is Mr. Nature: and for this safari, some of you will only have to walk out to your back yards.

My brother, Mark, and my editor, Susan, are privileged to live in neighborhoods where peepers abound. One or the other will phone me, from time to time, so that I can hear the peepers, too.

The march of the seasons, the calling of the peepers, the tulip bulbs by our door putting out shoots–all part of God’s stuff, and it all works just fine. All the time.

P.S.–For those of you who collect crepuscularities, Chef John (“Food Wishes”) perpetrated one today: “My wanton use of egg glue cause my wontons to fall apart.” You can catch him on Youtube–one of Patty’s favorite cooking channels.

God’s Stuff: Spring Peepers

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Hi, Mr. Nature here–with spring peepers.

These tiny little frogs–I just love them!–are the first frogs to come out of hibernation in the winter, and in some places they come out hundreds at a time, and if you’re anywhere nearby, you’ll hear them peeping for all they’re worth to attract mates.

Next, but not just yet, will be the wood frogs; but for the time being, any un-frozen bodies of water belong to the peepers. It’s only mid-February, but my editor in Virginia tells me the peepers in her neighborhood are already tuning up and will soon be in full concert mode.

I love the four seasons God has given us, with their characteristic sights and sounds: a living world, life everywhere you look. And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31)

And just imagine what it’ll be like when He regenerates and restores His whole Creation.

God’s Stuff Works: Spring Peepers

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Very soon–if not already, depending on where you live–some of you will be blessed by the music of these tiny frogs calling for mates. Spring peepers usher in the spring.

The procession of the seasons, according to God’s ordering of things, is an infallible sign of His sovereign government over all of His creation–a very good thing to remember, in the face of the tide of wickedness and folly that overflows this present age.

Someday, according to God’s plan, all of that will be abolished. He will regenerate His entire creation, and put all of it under Jesus Christ, the King of Kings.

Trust in the Lord.

These frogs do.