Jeremiah, is that you?
It might have been a large leaf blown onto the road by the storm Sunday evening, that’s how still it was.
My boyfriend pulled the car over to the berm, a maneuver he’s perfected these past few years from all the times I’ve thought I’ve seen an injured animal alongside the road. I got out of the car for a closer look.
There it was: a bullfrog sitting in the middle of Avondale Drive, a few yards from Friendly Avenue in Greensboro.
I’m used to seeing small toads on hiking trails, but not a frog this size in a residential area. I later learned that a creek runs along Avondale, a perfect habitat for bullfrogs and other amphibians.
Bullfrogs are the largest frogs in North America; this one would easily have filled the palm of my hand. They’re the last amphibians to come out in the spring, and you can usually see them in June after heavy rain. Or if you don’t see them, you may hear them: they have a booming call that sounds like they’re saying “jug-o-rum.”
Poet Carl Sandburg paid tribute to their song in “Young Bullfrogs.”
(http://www.bartleby.com/134/27.html)
They’re out for a short time. By September, they’ll be hibernating in the mud around swamps and streams, waiting for next summer.
Though a bullfrog can jump nine times its length, this one wasn’t moving. Not until I reached down to move it out of harm’s way. It took off then, jumping wildly, its legs slapping against the wet pavement, and disappeared in the grass at the edge of the road.