Catching Bullfrogs

Today it's raining and I'm not sure what we are going to do. Yesterday, though, was a ton of fun. Early in the morning we went down to the beach and the children engaged in various kinds of Beach Play. Trying to dam a stream to change its course. Running along the sand avoiding jellyfish. Splashing in waves. Peering at the cliff walls to see the fossil shells. Searching for sharks teeth. Lying in the sand and tracing each other. Finally, we discovered a gigantic weeping willow. The space under it must have been fully the size of my living room. The girls immediately decided it was a ballroom in a palace and the princess play began. One nice touch was that Natalie chose to explain the holes in the tree canopy, through which you could see the beach, by saying that they were the paintings which hung on the walls of her palace. Paintings of water and sand.

After a while I suggested that we walk to Lake Anne. This was a different kind of watery world, the freshwater lake (more of a pond, really). The children were enchanted by the frogs, those who sat as still as glistening statues with golden eyes, and those who briskly hopped away like pebbles skipping over water when they sensed our approach. A great blue heron which we disturbed flew gracefully away. The children explored the water lilies and the duckweed and asked a hundred questions about the gigantic snapping turtles which live in the deep water. (For this reason there are posted No Swimming signs.) We walked along the boardwalk which reaches over the water and sat on the benches and looked at the frogs. Finally we crossed the boardwalk and walked around the other side of the lake. We discovered a HUGE bullfrog. This was nice because I had been telling the children that my little brother, their uncle, used to spend all his summer days catching bullfrogs at Lake Anne with his bare hands. He would come home muddy to his hips every day. Once he found a group of eggs and brought them home and hatched them, hoping they were frogs. They weren't -- we had pet salamanders instead. But it was nice for the girls to see a bullfrog after hearing all these stories. In fact, when we went up to the pool later, I was talking with a woman who knew my brother and I when we were little and she immediately started talking about how he always brought her frogs to look at!




It reminded me that I have a nature recording of a dusky serenade Great Smoky Mountain Frogs & Friends. I love this piece of "music", which is actually pure nature sounds with none of that annoying human created musical accompaniment. The description states, "This "Moonlight Serenade" was recorded deep in the Great Smoky Montains. It begins at dusk and continues 74 minutes into the night. The "sounds of the night" continually change as darkness descends upon the water."




I promised the children that we would go back up to Lake Anne at twilight to hear if our frogs also sang in the evening.

Today, though, it is raining. How can we follow such a wonderful day of walking and being in nature with a boring day of sitting around the house? Even if we are reading, it's bound to be dull. Maybe this is the day I look through the board game collection and we learn some new ones.



Or perhaps it's the perfect day for paper dolls... I used to keep all my Craft and Art books at the school but I've recently decided to bring them home since my girls are old enough to look through and decide on projects that they want to do. Maybe it'll be an Art and Craft Day. Wait, wait, it's coming to me now. Sock Puppets!