TRANSCRIPT
This is Age of Humans. I’m Alex Chambers.
One night last spring my partner and I were getting ready for bed. I was telling her about my day and suddenly she pointed at me and said “There’s a frog in here.” I was confused. Usually her jokes are funny. This was just weird. But I realized she wasn’t pointing at me. I followed her gaze, and sure enough, there was a frog on our closet door. It was really unexpected.
The frog was just chilling there on the door, but I…panicked a little.
I was imagining rolling onto it at 2 am. Squish. So I said to Molly, “Keep an eye on it, I’m gonna get a jar.” I ran to the kitchen. I ran back with the jar. But the frog had jumped. Right below the closet door was her laundry basket. We both said “In there!” She started to dump it out, and I said “Not in here!” So she took it to the back porch and one by one took her clothes out and shook them, at arm’s length, because she was, understandably, worried the frog might jump on her. I wasn’t as worried about myself because I was pretty sure a frog couldn’t jump around a corner ten feet away.
I watched Molly empty the basket. No frog. We ran back to the bedroom. Bin of shoes! Don’t dump it in here! Molly looked at me, and dumped it. No frog. Then I noticed the meditation cushion next to the closet – which I clearly don’t use very often – and it occurred to me to pick that up, and there was the frog, serene as a lotus flower.
I put the jar over it. Once it was confined, it was a lot easier to feel friendly with it. It hopped onto the side of the jar, and we spent a while looking at its white belly, and its gray, mottled back. We took pictures and looked it up online. Cope’s gray tree frog. It was pretty cool, although I thought tree frogs lived in the tropics, not southern Indiana. That was the first bad sign. Eventually we took it outside to go free, and there was another tree frog on our siding. We closed the window and went to bed, listening to them sing.
It was raining that night, and it kept raining. A couple nights later, Molly pointed out two frogs on the outside of our sunroom window. Pretty soon there were three, four, five, all chirping. We watched them for a while, then I went out into the misty night and saw probably ten more, all over our house. The neighborhood trees were full of them. It was otherworldly. Cool air, wet frogs. It felt like a rainforest. I thought to myself, “We’re doomed.”
See, I worry about climate change, pretty constantly. Any time the weather seems out of whack – warm stretch in January, a day of heavy rain – it’s another sign of catastrophe staring me down. So when these frogs that seemed like they should live in the Amazon took up residence on my street, climbing up the trees to sing to each other, getting ready to mate and make new life, all I could think was, “We’re all gonna die.”
For better or worse, I’m not the only person who thinks this way.
Turner DeBlieux: That’s all I think about as well. I mean I don’t work on climate change, but it affects everything I do. So. I do think about it the same way.
AC: I’d been curious whether the tree frogs really were some sort of climate-induced plague upon us, so I went and talked with ecologist Turner DeBlieux. That’s his last name, DeBlieux.
TD: DeBlieux.
AC: Double-U.
TD: Like the letter.
AC: But not the letter. The name. D E B L I E U X. Anyway, Turner’s a PhD student in ecology at Indiana University. So I found him – eventually – in the science building, and he told me that they weren’t a plague at all. They’re actually quite common in southern Indiana. They were just – you know – doing their springtime thing.
TD: They’ll get on your house, right, a single tree frog might get on your house, the temperature’s right, the humidity’s right and so it’ll start to call, hoping to gather other males that will also call. And so, generally if one male’s calling another will hear it, they’ll say that must be a good spot, they’ll get over there and either find own space or compete for a space, and then they’ll start calling as well. A bunch of males calling attracts a bunch of females which is what they want. And so the goal is to develop a chorus. So a chorus is what—how I described it earlier is if I walk into a pond and the calling stops it’s not a chorus. Laughter. Which isn’t really – that’s not a great threshold.
AC: So they’re reaching out, trying to find each other. Get it on.
TD: When they’re on your house they’re probably not attempting to chorus, they’re just trying to attract. In a pond they would chorus.
AC: Or at least they’re trying to gather a quorum. But so okay, they were doing their thing. But I was still pretty sure it was a plague[CA1] . I mean, I’d never heard them like this before.
TD: It also could be that it was just a timing difference. I noticed that they bred kind of later last year than they typically do. And so there’s not—typically there’s a lot of frogs calling at the same time. And so you might just not hear them because there are so many other things calling. Or like, at that point, cicadas, all the other things that call at night will start calling, and so you may not—you just may not have heard them because of the overlap. And this year I feel like they—at least in my experience they were a little bit later than typical, and so I did notice hearing the calls more clearly. And it could have been it was a bad year and everyone was desperate, so they called more.
AC: Okay, so it was climate change. I knew it. The polar vortex the previous winters had put them on the edge of survival. These were their desperate final calls.
TD: So, the gray tree frog and the Copes gray tree frog are pretty common as far as frogs go, so I’m not super worried about them, as far as climate change. They have a really large range, and they’re pretty general—like, they can adapt to a house, so they don’t face a combination of threats per se.
AC: Or…maybe they’re fine. Which was reassuring. All the rain we’re gonna keep getting in the Midwest – at least it’ll be good for the frogs. Climate change is terrifying, but the frogs are gonna be just fine.
TD: I mean, all frogs are doing really terribly right now, so I can’t say that like, you know, like one in four frogs faces the threat of extinction at this moment in history. It’s like a huge extinction level event, and so I can’t say that they’re gonna be safe, but if any frog’s is safe, it’s the gray tree frog, the bullfrog, you know, the very common frogs that have a really wide distribution. They’re probably gonna be okay.
AC: The gray tree frogs are adaptable. And I know that doesn’t hold for all the creatures. As Turner reminded us, we’re in the midst of the sixth major extinction event in the planet’s history. We’re gonna have to keep talking about this. But for now, it’s worth remembering that humans are pretty adaptable too. We’re pretty good at calling out to each other. If we’re going to make it, we’re going to have to keep sending our voices out into the ether, finding ways of getting together. That’s what we’re going to try to do on this show.
This is Age of Humans. I’m Alex Chambers.
[Tree frogs, music.]
Okay, I’m back. I’m gonna do the credits. And then I have one more thing at the end.
This episode was written and produced by me, Alex Chambers, with original music by Ramón Monras-Sender. Ramón also edited the script. Sky Adams did the cover art. The Hot Stuff editorial board includes Sky Adams, Ross Gay, Essence London, Dave Torneo, Molly Weiler, and Kayte Young.
Last thing. In the spirit of the how to, I’m going to close with a Hot Stuff tip. Today, it’s from Turner DeBlieux, and it’s relevant whether you’re heading down to the pond, taking out the compost, or, maybe, in your bedroom, getting ready to turn in.
TD: Be nice to frogs. They’re not as creepy as people think they are. I know they’re kind of slimy, but they’re also kind of fun.
Thanks for listening.
