The astringent air, fragrant as a washrag dipped in rubbing alcohol and lime—no doubt from the Witch Hazel blooms that abound in the understory of this autumn forest—carries a sound shrill and repetitious as a blacksmithing hammer, but more organic. It comes from far off, and from something small—a frog smaller than a pea-coat button: Hyla crucifer—the Spring Peeper.
Why does he call in fall? Amplexus—his pseudo-coital hug—accomplished long ago, his months of foraging nearly over, he should be hopping from his human-knee-high perch on a tree or shrub to slip noiselessly under a forest-floor leaf or log, where he’ll spend the winter sometimes frozen, sometimes thawing. Instead he chirps, over and over.
It’s likely the photo-period that has him going. October 10th could be April 9th as far as he knows, sunrise and sunset the same. He has no memory of mating, no knowledge of orbits and equinoxes, no calendar to keep him straight, only the sun on his throat, which seems to draw his call out and into its own fiery heart.
I listen to him sing, alone with the sun, doing what he thinks is right, no one to judge.
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