False Spring

    Driving through the vast woods of the Myles Standish State Forest just now through a driving 40 degree Fahrenheit rain, I swerved to avoid a frog -- a frog, on December 29th! -- hopping across the road.

    The poor guy; he thinks it's spring. It froze and he went into torpor or hibernation, and now he is going to the pond expecting to eat and mate. And, in 24 to 36 hours, the temperature will drop 35 degrees, and the pond will freeze solid as an arctic airmass comes to sit over New England. And, if he is lucky, this frog pal of ours will live. But if not -- if the stress of coming out of hibernation so early is too great, and his fat reserves expended, or the swamp where he burrows freezes before he can get back under the mud -- then, then he will die.

   Goddamit, this frog thinks. This isn't supposed to happen until late March! This is a false Spring, a spring without hope.

   The amphibians are the canaries in the coal mine (pun intended). And they are speaking to us in their wordless ways.

   Them that have ears, let them hear.