Tiny Little Huge Frog Noises

So.  One thing we didn't notice during the cold daylight hours of a late winter and early spring renovation, and has only come to light now that we are living in the new house, is that the dirt and grossness pit in our backyard (which will someday be a real pool) is apparently the home of a menagerie of loud creatures.  Mark says they're frogs.  Okay then.  Frogs.

On warm muggy nights (read: almost every night in eastern North Carolina from April to October), we are serenaded (I mean that in the absolute loosest definition of the word) through the evening by loud frogs.  Really really loud frogs.  Like, turn-up-the-volume-I-can't-hear-the-movie-over-the-frogs loud.  LOUD.

Loud enough that soundproofing the doors and windows along the back of the house wouldn't be totally crazy. 

We've had a few nights where the frogs are pretty quiet.  When the weather is sixtyish or below (usually happens after midnight).  Deck lights and flood lights will make them quietly cautious for a few minutes.  Turning Bowden loose in the pool area sometimes does the trick. But despite what Mark told me (and what I might or might not have believed in a somewhat gullible moment), dumping a bunch of ice in the pool to cool things off and shut them up isn't a real thing.

Mark went exploring a few nights ago and found some of our loud pool squatters.  And you know what?  They're tiny.  Unless you've seen the size of the bricks on our pool deck, you won't have much sense of scale from this picture.  But they're small.  Like, an inch or two.  Tiny. 

I can't believe something so small, even in a group, can cause such a racket.  (Somewhere out there, my parents are knowingly smiling and nodding their heads.  You know, because they raised Ashley.  The only loud one of the three of us.)

The internets tell us we're lucky because frogs mean no bugs.  And let's be honest, the pool is pretty much a swamp these days.  The bugs could be out of control, but right now they're manageable.  I guess we have the frogs to thank for that, so I won't "chlorinate" the pool (read: run in a mad frenzy from the laundry room with several gallons of household bleach to put those suckers out of our misery) just yet.  I choose noise over bugs, for sure.  I just wish those danged frogs would eat more and talk less.*

*Also something I hear myself saying to Nathan three times a day.