Frog Haven

Today is November 30, and we've had no rain at all since November 6. On top of that, the heat of summer has passed, and it gets chilly when the sun goes down. That means the poor frogs that live around here are having a tough time.

When nights are hot and rain is a daily occurrence, the little squirrel frogs and pinewoods tree frogs leave their daytime safe houses to look for a meal. Favorite spots to hide are the downspouts and some large arborvitae on the shady side of our house. After dark, the frogs venture out, climbing down to the concrete driveway in front of the garage door. There, they wait for insects attracted by the light. June bugs are special treats.

Often we are startled by the "clunk" a little frog makes when he jumps onto our living room window.

In our part of south Florida, houses may be only six feet above sea level. The every-day rains collect in ditches at the fronts and backs of our houses, and the frogs rush there to breed when there is water. Walk out the front door during or after a rain, and we are assaulted by a cacophony of croaking and peeping. Not all species of frog sing the same tune or in the same key.

As soon as the sun is up, the sounds subside as the frogs return to their daytime resting places. With the afternoon rains, though, these singers, which are a pale tan and no bigger than two inches long, tune up again.

The frogs can be found in peculiar places. Until we understood their habits, we were shocked to find a frog under the rim of one of our toilets when we returned home from two months in Indiana. How did it get there? Was someone playing a joke on us? This year, we found a dead frog on our kitchen floor. A Florida-native neighbor had the simple explanation: the frog likely climbed up on the roof at night and slid down the toilet's standpipe to escape the morning sun. It sounded plausible.

When Ed opened an accordion hurricane shutter in late August in preparation for what we thought would surely be a hit from Hurricane Isaac, he was astounded to find three frogs in residence. What a mess they'd made.

The photo here shows another froggy hiding place - in the middle of a bromeliad.

A Lesson

I've been thinking a lot lately about a guy named "Carlton" and how much I learned from him. An unlikely teacher, he was one of the people in our neighborhood when we lived on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. We saw him almost every day - when he picked up his mail, or waited to see the nurse at the clinic, or hitched a ride into town, or walked past our house on the way down to his.

Now, Carlton had something terrible wrong with him. There was no debate about that. One theory was that his brains were fried by illegal drugs, especially "weed." He was normal at one time and even sang bass in the church choir, his former high school teacher told me. Another theory was that he suffered from schizophrenia, a more likely diagnosis. One day he'd sit on the ground and loudly curse the government. On another day, he'd carry a briefcase and say he was advising the government on this or that project. How he acted from day to day was unpredictable.

After Hurricane Hugo decimated the island, the government gave storm victims small pre-fab houses, usually two rooms plus a tiny kitchen, to replace what they had lost. Carlton, who was about 25 when we first met him, was a recipient, but his Hugo House was put together in the busy and often noisy area near where his mother lived. Carlton didn't like the Hugo House and rarely slept there. Instead, he preferred the ruins of a house in an uninhabited area close to the sea.

Hugo House

There were no in-patient mental health services on the island, and hardly any out-patient treatment except for the shots provided at the clinic just up the hill from our house. I guess he got a shot of some kind once in a while, but I didn't know the particulars and didn't want to pry.

We all just did the best we could with however Carlton presented himself on a given day. When his feet were sore from wearing beat-up men's dress shoes without socks, one neighbor bought him a pair of sneakers. Another neighbor always had a can of tuna or sardines on hand to feed Carlton when his disability check didn't stretch far enough. Papayas, coconuts and grapefruit, some from our yards and some growing wild, rounded out his diet.

When he wanted a ride into town, usually with briefcase in hand and wearing his best clothes, one of the neighbors would always oblige, despite what we all knew about his behavior of yesterday or last week. He could carry on a conversation, sometimes lucid, sometimes not. And we talked. Despite his affliction, whatever it was, we all tried to treat him like a normal man.

He was one of us, after all.

   

Saga of the Annie B

The year after we bought our house in Florida, we decided life would be incomplete without a boat. After all, we're only a block from a boat ramp, and almost everyone on our street has a boat and trailer in the driveway.  

Neither of us had ever piloted a boat before. But we bought a 16-foot "vessel" from a neighbor, who had bought it from somebody, who had bought it from somebody. The boat was manufactured in 1987 by a company that was out of business, but the boat seemed seaworthy when we took a test drive.

We loved driving the "Annie B," as we named her, out into Pine Island Sound and then several miles south to Safety Harbor for lunch. Or, on days when we were busy, we would take her out for a much shorter outing, which we called "around the block." This route took us from our slip through Jug Creek and out to the Number 8 marker in Pine Island Sound. From there, we turned right into Charlotte Harbor, turned right again into Jug Creek and, at "no-wake" speed, eased our way back home.

The Annie B behaved herself most of the time, but every year or so, something major would happen to the old inboard/outboard engine, and we would have to phone our boat mechanic. The old saying that "a boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money" turned out to be apt on those occasions.

Although the Annie B seemed to be in top mechanical condition this past summer, and she even sported a new Bimini top to keep the sun off and some new upholstery to replace what had fallen apart, all was not well in the engine compartment. One day, when Ed took her out for some exercise, she overheated. He turned her off. She started up again, but refused to budge. Some fishermen who happened by towed the disabled Annie B to our dock, and Ed immediately called the mechanic to come and have a look.

Repairs this time, he told us, might cost as much as $1,200. Oh, dear. We had paid only $3,000 for her in the first place.

Ed and I concluded that, since we were really too busy to use the boat much, putting out that kind of money was ridiculous, and we should just try to sell her as-is and get out of the boat business. When advertising didn't result in any offers, however, we contemplated giving her to the Salvation Army or the Goodwill, if, in fact, either would want an aging/aged watercraft with a past.

One day, as we were driving over one of the many bridges around here, I said "How does it make you feel when you realize you're never going out to the Number 8 marker again?"

Ed said, "Sad."

"Me, too," I said.

When we returned home, Ed took the for-sale signs off the boat and called our mechanic.

Favorite Tree

When I used to think about the tropics - before we moved to Florida - the image that came to mind was coconut palms blowing in a warm breeze. Actually, such trees won't grow everywhere in the state, as I've since learned. In fact, they survive only from Lake Okeechobee south.

I learned today that global warming may be slowly changing the range and has allowed a few coconut palms to live as far north as Orlando.

Most coconut palms grow near the coasts, where they can stand salt air and even high winds, although some trees fall victim to tropical storms and hurricanes. I've heard that coconut palms require salty breezes to thrive, but I don't believe that's true. If they do, please leave me a comment at the end of this post.

If you live in the right zone of hardiness for growing coconut palms - our zone is 10a - getting a nut to sprout isn't difficult, although it takes about as long as it does to grow a human baby. You lay a coconut on its side, bury it half way in potting soil mixed with sand, water now and then and expect roots to sprout in about 9 months.

When we lived roughly 600 miles south of here, on the island of Montserrat, the previous owner of our house had taken to throwing his cast-off coconuts just over the fence. Over a period of several years, a bunch of them sprouted, so we had a hedge of palm trees. At the golf club on the island, someone painted a coconut blue and laid it on the ground to mark the direction to the first tee. In due time, even though painted, this "dry nut" put out a green shoot and had to be replaced.   

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Wild Things

Maybe it's because we live so close to the Everglades. Maybe it's because we have Nature preserves all over the state of Florida, and civilization is encroaching upon them. For whatever reason, we are having more close encounters with wild things.

One day last year, I sat in the car while my husband went into a printery to run an errand. Within five minutes, I saw what I at first thought was a German shepherd crossing the road not 500 feet away. Before he disappeared into the woods, however, I realized his legs were too long and his body, too skinny, to belong to a dog. No doubt about it, I had seen a coyote.

I didn't hear about more sightings until a few weeks ago when our island's newspaper reported that a coyote was found dead alongside the road between us and Ft. Myers, victim of a hit and run.

This morning, as we were taking our morning walk, a man whom we regularly see along the way told us there is a coyote and two pups in a nearby woods and that if we listened, we could hear them. We didn't want to get too close or dawdle, as we had our dog along, but we did make out the yippy sounds of what could have been baby beasties. Ed thought the sound might have been caused by trees rubbing together, but I wasn't so sure. (This bears looking into at a later date.)

Then, on the TV news this evening, there was home video of a coyote running up the side of a busy street on the mainland, car and camera in pursuit. The police advised residents in the area to keep cats and small dogs inside. There is no plan, so far as I know, to catch and relocate.

Remote Island

During the 1990s, my husband and I spent four extended periods - three to six months each - on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. The island is located sort of between Antigua and Guadaloupe and near St. Kitts and Nevis, but is so small it doesn't show up on many maps.

How did we find such a remote place? Ed was asked by a minister friend to go with a group to help rebuild houses after Hurricane Hugo. That storm struck in 1989 and damaged 90 percent of the buildings on the island. He fell in love not only with the people but with the island itself, even in its devastated state.

Sadly, Montserrat was just getting back on its feet, with more and more tourists arriving to soak up the relaxed lifestyle and the beautiful surroundings, when a volcano, which had been dormant since the 1500s, sprang to life in July of 1995, shooting boulders the size of cars up in the air.

We bought our house in 1992, never dreaming what was to happen three years later. What a treasure it was, though, to learn first-hand about a different culture and way of life. Despite how it all ended, we wouldn't have given up the experience for anything.

This is the first of what I hope will be many posts about Montserrat. I kept a detailed diary and have written 

an as-yet unpublished memoir, which I'll share with you from time to time.