Frogs
Written by Major Tom
Filed under: Personal and Family, Philosophy
May 19, 2007
It’s both startling and astonishing how the weather behaves strangely nowadays. In the initial days of March, when summer was supposed to be ushered in gradually, the rains came pouring in, like an unexpected visitor whom one does not know exactly how to receive—had it came for a bountiful afternoon chatter over bristling cups of coffee or had just got to stop by due to a vital intent?
And now while May slowly loses its days to another month, the rains are hard to come by and the temperature rises even when night falls so deep into midnight, when it is supposed to be cool and breezy outside, and of course in the living room.
Strange weather, really.
So the ground are so dry nowadays that some afternoons ago I decided to weed out the backyard with unwanted growths, having no troubles whatsoever with muddy soil that get stuck in the slippers I wear. I had once popped the idea of landscaping the whole area with Bermuda grasses to my wife—about a week ago— but even I had scoffed when she mentioned to me that it would cost nearly ten thousand bucks to have it done by gardeners from the plant store across the highway. What do you actually call these establishments that sells plants and flowers in pots. I actually have no idea as of this moment.
So for now, the bermudas or carabao grasses would have to wait and I’ve got to contend myself of laboring towards manually eliminating the weeds for now (which can actually grow towards knee level when left unattended for so long) and my oh my, it was so painstaking an activity that my muscles ache all night long after that, and when I woke up the next morning, I could barely walk.
When I was scything the weeds, I had discovered that frogs were ensconced tightly in some nooks and corners of the waterless ground. I noticed this sight immediately for it was certainly a bit of an aberration to see frogs while water is so absent in an area. Frogs means water or rain. And rain means tadpoles and croaking reverberations in the night.
I then wonder how these amphibians can keep up with the arid surroundings even when I know that usually they soak themselves in cool water almost all the time. To be sure, it must have meant that frogs have developed adaptation schemes to combat queer weather situation and atypical habitats. Now perhaps there comes the answer to the momentary query of where do frogs goes when the rains haven’t come for a long, long time. They hide themselves in darkened nooks and crevices in the ground, behind and under mossy stones and shady plants, over misty soil where sunrays could not dry up thoroughly.
This reminds me of an episode of one of my favorite television show when I was a kid, Life On Earth. One unforgettable discussion there was this very strange looking fresh-water fish who can survive for months and months to come even when the ground become so dry that the soil is caked all throughout, like in a span of desert that is so cruel to any shrubbery.
I remember how the host Mr. David Attenborough—he with the effervently musky voice–had dug about a couple of feet into the dry ground and grabbed a morsel of mud formation which he then dropped into a huge basin full of water. And then lo and behold, the pack of solidified mud started to move and slowly a funny looking fish swam away like it was just another day in the river.
It was so amazing how a water creature could survive for so long without water, breathing dry air and being stuck in cakes of mud like a frozen caveman; in order to wait for the rain to finally come and when the water rises again, the strange fish wiggles away into the world where it usually thrive on, and start another cycle in its life span.
Could you imagine a fish surviving out of the water for far too long, like half a year at a time? I couldn’t. But I remember that there was one fish that could actually do that. Therefore presenting an exception to that famous euphemism of being a “fish out of a water”, like I am so miserable now that I am like a fish out of the water.
Amazing survivability this fish has. And also those frogs in our backyard.
i won’t mind frogs’ noise these days. it means rain. and we in manila need a bit of it these days. it’s past midnight and it’s so hot and humid. and my electric bill is going through the roof because of so frequent use.
Comment by atticus — May 20, 2007 @ 12:25 am
yeah, the sun’s been cruel but we (in iligan) got heavy rain earlier tonight (may 19, 2007)! AND the air “smelled” cooler!
Comment by the caterpillar — May 20, 2007 @ 1:49 am
amazing how creatures can survive the harsh and unforgiving nature. I am always puzzled as to how certain creatures, mostly amphibians can produce skin tone that turns into the hue of the background - green, brown, grey to complete that perfect camouflage
Comment by bw — May 20, 2007 @ 4:01 am
i would like to have that ability to “hibernate”, so to speak, like that fish or frog. i’ve heard that our very own “dalag” has this ability just like the piranhas of south america. in case of piranhas, it is their eggs that are deposited in the ground caused by receding water and spawned back to life by water either by rain or flood.
frogs are good! they control the fly and mosquito population.
Comment by DatuPanot — May 20, 2007 @ 6:33 am
I’ve been taking showers 3-to-4 times a day still, Major Tom. At night I am awaken with sweat. With the air conditioner on, I’d be sneezing and nursing a cold in the mornings. Oh well.
I met this Pinoy inventor a few years back who is able to put the fish to sleep while in transit; saves on weight charges, for there’s no water in the shipping boxes.
Comment by eric — May 20, 2007 @ 7:21 am
Oh, you reminded me of my hometown. frogs come out before raining. afterwards, they’ll be all over the pond.
by the way, i hope you’ll keep this template. i love this. it’s neat!
Comment by ipanema — May 20, 2007 @ 9:11 am
you made me wonder which fish that was…
Comment by paolomendoza — May 20, 2007 @ 2:55 pm
You’re a good husband to manually weed out your backyard Major Tom!
It’s good exercise and you get to commune with nature and think up this great post. I didn’t know that about frogs and hibernating fish. 
It’s been raining quite regularly here in Cambodia. I think the hot weather is finally over on this part of the planet.
Comment by Toe — May 20, 2007 @ 4:30 pm
Don’t you just wish we could grow wings so we can fly off to cooler places during summer? Kinda like the wild geese that heads south at the advent of winter…
BTW, it’s good to know that there are still frogs in your area. It can only mean that your backyard and its surroundings is still ecologically sound. Frogs usually act as a barometer of the ecological health of a place.
Keep cool, man.
Comment by snglguy — May 20, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
There are fishes hat could walk from one pond to anoher… Mudskippers.
Comment by Richmond — May 20, 2007 @ 8:05 pm
I was always wondering where the catfish or “pantat” came from that they just re-appear in the rice field during rainy season and disappear during the arid dry season. now, I surmise that they hibernate at the bottom of the rice field and wait for the time to be able to get out of hibernation, when the earth turn into soft mud and they can wiggle out into the wet field.
talking about maintaining a lawn, we have a small bungalow in a wide lot and a very big lawn and it took a lot of back breaking work every spring and summer to maintain the green grass that now we have to engage the services of the professional gardener and I just do the mowing and seeding and some manual weeding out of stubborn weeds plus mowing my senior neighbor lawns.
Comment by vic — May 20, 2007 @ 11:44 pm
Why don’t you give your frogs a daily shower?
You should work more often in your garden and this would save you from muscles pain !
Comment by Sidney — May 21, 2007 @ 10:35 am
Good thing you have cool weather in your place. Here it’s too hot I wanna be a desert scorpion. Hehe.
Comment by Abaniko — May 21, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
To atticus: That’s what I am meaning to elaborate, why it’s already May but the rains here are not yet coming in as expected. Rainy nights can be so cool and good for deep slumberings…
To caterpillar: Oh, lucky there; at least the scorching heat of summer is over…
To bw: Me too although I have alreday seen this Discovery episode explaining how animals, especially salamanders, could change pigments of their skin color. I forgot exactly how it was explained but it consist mostly of
heat and temperature affecting the melatonin composition on their skin or something like that.
To DatuPanot: Oh, that’s the word that I should have been using, “hibernate”. Mostly, huge animals hibernate on caves and other dark forest areas. But these soirt of fish hibernate in the most cruelest of condition, under caked mud heated to the fullest extreme sunligth over a lenthy period of time. It’s amazing.
To eric: A sleeping fish on boar eh? Somehow I find that idea so funny that I remember asking myself once so many years ago about how do fishes really sleep. To find this out, I would wake up at midnight just to observe if the aquarium fish already sleep. But I remember, I never really caught them sleeping even at night. Maybe that’s the way they sleep, with open eyes and fins still moving.
To ipanema: What place is that. In our old neighborhood, frogs would be all over the ground when rain comes that it felt like we were in that sort of horror movies like “Rats” of “Worms”. Only it was thousands of frogs that was haunting. Thanks for noticing my new look…
To paolomendoza: I am really sorry but I just could not remember that now. You know, I have seen that Life On Eart episode so many years ago and Mr. Attenborough always refer to the animals presented there in their scientififc names.
To Toe: Exactly Toe; that’s what I habve observed that whenever I do this sort of activities, I become closer to nature and forget that there’s a rushing urban life our there.
We had always hired some youth from the neighborhood to do the weeding out but the grass kept coming back that I decided that maybe, I’d be the one to do it, to really uproot the roots from the ground. It’s such a tiring activity but somehow it gives me satisfaction, to acvhieve something at the end of the day, using my muscles and all. And besides, that makes me a good husband as you said…he..he..
To sngl: Oh I didn’t know that initially, bout frogs being barometers of ecological health. But it makes sense since I also consider that when nature is so full, butterflies and dragonflies are all around. But I havent seen any dragonfly in our area for a long, long time. Perhaps, the air here is not as heatlthy anynore.
To richmond: Yeah, I knew about this because about three block away from our place is a watery area that is so full of mud on the shores and there is a lot of skipping fish out there.
To vic: That’s probably what they do, hibernate. Mudfish or catfishes are known to burrow themeselves into thick muddy areas that they survive this way even when the rains haven’t come and the water level is low, or even absent.
To sidney: Geezzz, showering the frogs. That’s an unfamiliar idea for me. But I’ll try that as you say even though I am not really favorable to the sight of so many frogs on our grounds. I like them better when they are hiding or hibernatying somewhere else.
To Abaniko: A desert scorpion you say? Woooh, that’s mean and sharp. Maybe i’d want to be a harmless camel instead…
Comment by Major Tom — May 21, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
tell me about it! it’s so freakin hot…i think I melt every night.
Anyway 10k for a bermuda landscape? wow! I remember Papa and Mama doing it themselves when we were young. Didn’t cost a thing. They just get the bermuda grasses from the nearby elementary school and planted it like rice in our garden. Can’t remember exactly the period of time but say after a month, it already covered the whole lawn. Then they trimmed it. Simple as that
Comment by verns — May 21, 2007 @ 3:42 pm
To verns: Oh, in fact my wife told me that over there sa libingan ng kanyang tatay, meron doon mga grass cutters na nagbebenta ng mga plates of bermudas na mura lang talaga. Baka doon na lang kami bibili…If only I can find wild growths of bermuda grasses. Dito sa amin mahirap maghanap.
Comment by Major Tom — May 21, 2007 @ 3:51 pm
kulang ka sa exercise kya sumakit katawan mo..hehe! you have to weed more often para masanay muscles mo. yeah, my bro said its too hot nowadays there, buti nalang wala ako dyan…
i think every living things are capable to adapt themselves in every habitat given to them, even the human being…its the survival instinct that make us do the impossible.
out of the topic: hey, your template is new again…bilib nako talaga!
Comment by curacha — May 21, 2007 @ 4:58 pm
To curacha: I think you are very right sis coz I have not overworked myself for a long time now, except sa driving. Kaya I need to do some push ups and strectching…
Salamat sa pagpansin mo sa new theme ko.
Comment by Major Tom — May 21, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
I didn’t know that fish could breathe outside of the water.
We’ve got rain here over the weekend and it’s been chilly too.
Comment by niceheart — May 22, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
to niceheart: me too, I thought that way before. When I was a kid i loved fishing around the watery neighborhood and I have always observed that fish die slowly after a long time out of water. But apparently, some specie can for months and months to go.
Comment by Major Tom — May 22, 2007 @ 1:07 pm
Until this post, it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder where frogs go during summer.
Mud fish. Are you talking about mudfish. Dalag. They can survive in mud … as long as damp? not sun-baked.
Love this post .. lyrical for the most part.
Comment by annamanila — May 22, 2007 @ 5:25 pm
To annamanila: It wasn’t exactly the mudfish that I had seen in that Life On Earth episode but one that was a little darker in color and one with stranger features—like those deep sea fishes has. This fish could actually survive on very dry environment, within caked muds actually, in a area so dry that no shubbery would be seen.
Thanks by the way for the kind words on my post—this would for certain encourage me to be always do my best…
Comment by Major Tom — May 23, 2007 @ 10:01 am
you’re still lucky to have frogs there. i used to hear and see them at the creek at our backyard.
i don’t hear them anymore.
Comment by beatburn — May 23, 2007 @ 7:21 pm
Oh that’s too bad beatburn, considering that frogs are barometers of the environment’s health…
Comment by Major Tom — May 26, 2007 @ 11:15 am