One evening in late March, our first year on St. Peter’s Church Road, we were startled by some very strange sounds coming from the little pond by the pole barn: a demented whistling, or beeping, or pinging, like a thousand tiny submarines going nuts with high-pitched sonar.
We’d never heard anything like it, except in old science fiction movies. It was a spooky, otherworldly noise. What kind of creature could make such a racket?
A lively family debate ensued. I voted for insects. To my thoroughly urbanized ear, it sounded somewhat like an invasion of cicadas.
As usual, when it comes to family debates, I was completely wrong.
A friendly old-timer straightened me out: those warn’t no bugs! Them was peepers!
Peepers? I wondered. Two things came to mind when I heard the word “peeper.” Both were archaic. One was slang for “eyes,” as in the Johnny Mercer song from 1938, “Jeepers Creepers, where’d ya get those peepers?” The other “peeper” was in the same old-fashioned vein, as in: a lowlife who used his peepers to spy on dames in their boudoirs.
Of course, everybody in Perry County but me, apparently, knew full well that the peepers in our pond were actually tiny frogs. Pseudacris crucifers, to be exact.
The relationship of a small frog to a crucifer, or cross-bearer, may seem obscure until you get a good look at one of the cute little fellers and see the distinctive black marking in the shape of a cross on his slimy green – or brown, or gray – back.
The peeper is actually a bit of a chameleon — not to mix metaphors — in that he can darken or lighten the color of his skin depending on his state of mind or his surroundings.
In other words, a “mood frog.”
Peepers are quite small. I read an article that claimed a peeper could sit, without complaint, on a dime. I don’t know if we have unusually large peepers on our property, but I think ours would be much more comfortable perching on a quarter, or on a dollar bill folded into eighths. I suppose our peepers could scrunch up their hindquarters and sit on a dime if they absolutely had to. If, for instance, all the larger currency was already occupied.
Fine, you say. They’re small, they’re cute, they have unusual markings and a name fraught with religious baggage. So what’s with all the peeping?
Like so many of the sounds we hear in the spring, the peeping of the peepers has to do with the eternal call and response of the mating game. Well, the call, anyway. Virtually all the peepers you hear of a spring evening are males. And they’re all saying exactly the same thing: “Love ME!”
Thanks to the wonder of the internet, you can actually watch a peeper sing his astonishingly loud love song. But just in case you’re pressed for time, or are worried about your spouse catching you in front of a juicy amphibian video, let me summarize: the peeper squeezes his mouth and nostrils shut, then contracts his chest, compressing the lungs. The air shoots out of the lungs and past the larynx, which vibrates like an oboe reed, generating the characteristic shrill “peep!” The peep isn’t finished there, though. The outgoing breath has one more stop to make: the vocal sac, which bulges enormously, prolonging the peep and creating a nice resonating chamber.
Connoisseurs of peeper-song will notice that there are a couple of variations. There’s the regular old peeper call, which has the easy rhythm of a late-night party-goer strolling down a deserted street. However, should that street become crowded with rival peepers, there’s the so-called “aggression call,” which has some real urgency to it in the form of an insistent little trill, the peeper equivalent, I suppose, of a lion’s roar.
Peepers are hard to spot. They have excellent camouflage. Your best shot at seeing them is probably to catch a pair of peepers in flagrante delicto, a condition naturalists delicately refer to as “amplexus.” This is when the male frog, having succeeded in being chosen by the female as the next “Perry Peeper Idol,” squeezes the female from behind with his “nuptial pads” (I’m not making this up).
This moment of connubial bliss leaves the peepers somewhat vulnerable. And exposed.
Other fun facts about the humble peeper: on Martha’s Vineyard, he’s known as a “pinkletink;” in New Brunswick, as a “tinkletoe.” Peepers can survive being mostly frozen (but please, kids, don’t try this at home). A large group of peepers is officially known as “an army.”
I’ll close with a warning. Licking peepers does not result in a hallucinogenic drug trip, as some websites would have you believe.
All you get is a mouthful of frog.
This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 01 April 2010
For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com
