I was cleaning our messy basement after the holidays; toting yet another box of decorations to the Christmas hideaway for the next 11 months.
I watch my steps as I maneuver down the narrow hall and notice something on the floor. A wadded piece of wrapping paper, maybe? Some torn corner of a paper box? I touch it with my toe and am surprised when it jumps away. It’s a little frog. Or is it a toad?
I get down on the floor to frog level and take a closer look. It has those splayed out toes, and my sparse knowledge of such animals makes me guess it is some sort of tree frog. I take out my phone for a photo. Perhaps nervous by all the publicity, it hops under the bookcase and out of my sight.
How it got in our basement I have no idea unless it was attracted to our artificial silver Christmas tree. The frog surely has been here for a while. It’s late December, after all, and out in nature it would be hibernating. Well, I am not going to try to catch it, and I am certainly not going to put it outside in the cold, so I accept the fact that Becky and I have a house guest for the season.
Some days later, Becky and I run into Karen and Rich from the Garden Club. They know way more about frogs than any people I know, so I show them the photo of the camera shy frog. (Or is it a toad?) It is definitely a frog, they assure. A gray tree frog. We then get a short lesson on gray tree frogs. Indiana has two species which in the wild are almost impossible to tell apart.
You can either do a DNA test or learn the difference in their calls. Well, I haven’t heard any noise from the basement, and I don’t need to know anyway. We’ll let the frog be in our basement no matter the species. We’re suppose to welcome the stranger into our midst, right?
I wondered about food for our house guest. Now and again, a wolf spider appears in the basement sink, so I figure insects are around to provide nourishment. Karen said she knew a woman who once had a frog in the basement, and she put mealworms out for her amphibian visitor to eat. Well, it just so happens we have some mealworms (birds love them), so I set some out for the newest member of our household.
Fast forward three weeks to just after New Year’s Day, Becky’s birthday. The kids young and old came down to our house in the country for a celebration. The food was delicious and plentiful, and the party was festive and chaotic. The after-dinner activities were typical. Some walked in the woods and visited the neighbor’s animals. Some claimed a comfy spot where they could get quiet and relax their eyes. After a while, it happened that some of us wrote a song.
Daughter Rachel started singing, making up words, “It’s my mom’s birthday…” Daughter Rachel’s daughters Lorelei and Adelaide started banging rhythms on some of the percussion instruments we have around the house and tooting on flutes.
I grabbed a guitar.
The lyrics came slowly, but eventually shaped themselves into a song that listed our experiences of the day’s events: eating food, napping on the couch, visiting the horse and walking in the chilly air. My favorite line — everyone’s favorite, I think — comes rising up at the end of the bridge: “But it was too cold, it was too cold for the frog.” The song ends with a promise to come back and see the frog in May.
All were satisfied with the results. Becky says it is her favorite birthday gift. I am particularly pleased that the basement frog has now become part of our family’s lore.
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
