There are Frogs in Your Shoes!

by Catherine Al-Meten

“Oh, by the way, there are frogs in your shoes!”  I love those words---words I had never heard spoken to me or to anyone for that matter.  Recently I moved from a neat, quiet residential neighborhood in Monterey further up in the hills to live in a cottage under a grove of scrub oaks, I have been learning to live with new experiences.  I think my first big lesson was learning what the phrase, “pitch dark,” meant. When I came home from San Francisco one Friday night, I got out of my car and realized, I could not see a thing. It was so dark; I could not see my own hand right in front of my face.  I now have discovered that there are exactly 14 steps from where I park to the gate.  One step more or less leads me into the fence and the chicken wire used to keep the deer out of the garden.  There is also a flashlight in my car, and my routine involves making my way to the house to put on the porch light.  Leaving the car light on does not work so well, I found, after waking up to a nearly dead battery.  The oaks that provide cool shade for my house and nesting places and food for the local birds, also block out the sky.  If I can see the sky, I can find my way.  However, the shade of day becomes the pitch dark of night.

Settling in here has entailed getting use to new sounds as well.  In Monterey, the barking of the Harbor Seals provides a steady background song to the residents. I miss not hearing their harping mating calls and the other sounds I had gotten used to…the neighborhood children on their way to school or home, the neighbors’ comings and goings as well as their voices and laughter.  The occasional siren and the light swishing sounds of traffic…all sounds I do not hear anymore.  I moved here during nesting season—the time of the year when couples of all species are mating and making homes for their families.  The two redheaded woodpeckers I saw sitting side by side on a tree up the hill…rat-tat tatting together.  The beautiful California Quail and his harem of hens skittering about the brush and low-lying tree branches, calling out warnings and orders to one another. The sound of the afternoon wind stirring up the trees as she passed down the creek bed from the top of the hill.  The many bird calls I hear from far and wide…mourning doves, night owls, hawks, jays and crows, sparrows and countless other birds, and oh yes, the peacocks and chickens who live across the yard together in a chicken coop.  

The tiny, furry, gray vole that lives under my front porch has been out in the morning sun, gathering grass to take back to her latest brood of baby voles.  Having watched the animal versions of critters and read the delightful storybooks about the forest creatures with my Granddaughter, Lola, I was surprised at my reaction to the real deal.  One morning as I was opening my door and preparing to walk out, a small critter moved straight in my direction. My response was to scream bloody murder and fly back behind the safety of my screen door.  I then watched to see what this menacing animal was.  Not a rat or a mouse, I deduced, nor a baby squirrel.  Having no idea what it was, I ran to my North American field guide to mammals and there I found the description of the gray vole.  I learned that they do not eat humans, but preferred (I would observe later) to eat grass.  I had not seen her before because she stays underground until May. Coming out from her burrow, she appeared to me in early May.  I must have been quite a surprise to her as well.  My field guide told me that Miss Voll has about three litters of 7-8 pups a year.  My imagination was filled with visions of being overrun with voles and baby voles between now and October.  After a couple of days of watching her come out in the mid-morning sun to eat, grass. I stopped seeing her.  My neighbor tells me Miss Voll might have been attacked by a hawk. My neighbor had seen a similar animal with mangled hind legs, dragging about the upper garden.  Of course, my remorse was instant. “Why hadn’t I been more understanding and welcoming?” I am learning that life in the woods is full of this type of experience.

I recall years ago taking a hike with friends out here in the Valley.  I had leaned down to “pet” a small lizard and was, to say the least, surprised when it hurriedly crawled right up the leg of my jeans…with me still in them.  Again, screams and a whole lot of shaking involved.  I now steer clear of the lizards who like to sun on the large rocks beneath the oak in my side yard and on the warm bricks of my back porch on hot sunny days.  

There are legions of Daddy Long Legs who live both inside and outside my cottage.  At night they cling to the back screen door and hover around the yellow porch light  I am constantly lifting them out of corners of my house on brooms (with long handles to keep us at a friendly distance) or on rolled-up newspapers, which I shake or throw out in the garden.  My mother used to tell me these elegant creatures were friendly, shy, and ate flies…and I am sure that’s true, but I still prefer that they stay outside.  Somewhere here inside, however there is a large, black spider with whom I am living.  She used to be in my bedroom, but lately has been going back and forth across my bright yellow kitchen.  Think Charlotte’s Web only not so cozy.  We keep our distance, and I assure her I will not harm or kill her, but she does need to respect my need for distance.  

This brings me to the frogs.  As the title of this article suggests, I live among frogs.  The California Tree Frog, to be precise…although I hear they have had their name changed lately.  To me, they are the frogs.  Nightly since first moving here at the end of March, I have heard their booming voices croaking out their mating calls to one another.  What Monterey and Pacific Grove residents experience as the harbor seal chorus, the valley and hill folk experience the chorus of frogs.    Since first being serenaded by the amorous frogs each night since late-March, I have kept my window open because they are pleasant sounds…so unlike the jack hammers, sirens, trash trucks, and screaming drunks on the streets of San Francisco (where I spend many of my weeknights). The frogs are loud, but much more soothing than the urban sounds.  Neither they nor the sea lions ever kept me awake.  However, I am aware that I am surrounded by what seems like hundreds of croakers.  In the daytime, I have yet to see a frog.

I recall as a child, seeing large bullfrogs in the garden, and going to the local drainage ditch with my friends to collect polly wogs in clean, glass jars.  All summer we would keep our eyes on the growth of the polly wogs, and after some time, what had started as a tiny sperm-like, wiggly shapes, had grown legs, a tail, and eyes…We would release the frogs into the garden.  Here in the woods, the frogs had only been the sound, until the other day.   Walking up the dirt road a few days ago, I noticed a small, flattened, very dead frog…not as big as the palm of my rather small hand.  Is that the frog that booms out its deep, bass-like, booming croak each night?  Evidently so.  My flattened friend hadn’t made it through the night.  

I keep my gardening crocks on the back porch and because of the spiders and lizards, I thought it best to keep the shoes turned upside down.  I realize spiders have been known to make themselves at home in any position, but I thought it was “safer” with the shoes turned upside down…a reminder to me to shake the shoes out before putting them on. It never occurred to me that the lime green crocks would make a nice No-Tell-Motel for a pair of mating frogs.  Which, according to my neighbor, is just what happened.  While my  neighbor was watering my potted plants in my absence, she also took the occasion to sweep off my tiny back porch.  In so doing, she discovered two frogs living in my neon lime green, upside down, gardening shoes.  When she said to me, “Oh, by the way, there are frogs living in your shoes,” I could not have been more surprised.  I mean if Sri Lanka can “declare peace” after a 25 year old war, I guess there can be frogs living in my shoes.  Nevertheless, it was a surprise to me, and it made me laugh.  So much, so that I had to write this story down…I have enjoyed laughing at my learning experiences of living in the woods.  There are frogs in my shoes, and I think I will just let them be.  I can always get another pair of shoes.  I hear there are mountain lions living here too?!

By Catherine Al-Meten

May, 2009