Frogs in the City

I have a frog yen that hatched in me as a little girl and kicks its legs inside me still. Every spring, when Steven’s creek receded from the winter’s rainy flood, came tiny brown frogs, no bigger than your thumbnail, and millions, (I swear millions!) of tiny black tadpoles. There is nothing to me like that sight. I caught them in cupped hands, put them in a round glass globe of creek water with rocks and seaweed and hung the globe in my mom’s custom macramé in the kitchen so we could watch them up close, growing legs, becoming frogs. Every year the same plot and yet it was always suspenseful.

Nature is the original bestselling mystery writer.

So, today I went down to the banks of Longfellow Creek to get my frog ya-ya’s. I don’t know what I was expecting to find there; I didn’t see any frogs. But the little voice said “Go!” So, I went and dug in the soft creek bank for 20 minutes, rooting out morning glory, the zombie of invasive weeds. It has white skeletal roots and lives by swarming over and sucking the brains out of the plants that outta be there. The ones that help frogs. Then we had a break, then we weeded for another 20 minutes.

Except that actually, it was four hours.

This is why I love frogs, creeks, the undersides of trees. I lose track of time. A very wise friend said to me once that when you are wondering what your “bliss” is, ask yourself: what do I lose track of time, doing? For me, it is way up-close interaction with little plants and bugs. I was like a happy little girl, talking to the black millipedes with their pretty yellow shoes and the caterpillars in their green lounge suits.

I talked to the other volunteers as well. I used the same voice for both. I’m pretty sure they didn’t think I was crazy.

The caterpillars, I mean.

I didn’t see any frogs, but I got filled up with creek time, leaf noises, the smell of soft old logs. I felt really useful and good, taking care of our common land with the other King County Conservation District volunteers: Fred with the gravity-defying moustache, Lisa the pretty mom, Matthew, who had a splendid British accent and his young daughter Diane. Plus friendly leader Adam. I got to know them a little bit, got to know my watershed.

Hello, Longfellow Creek.

I made me want to have what I used to have. Frogs in my own yard, my own garden. Frogs in the city, again. They used to be here. They want to come back. I think it’s possible. I learned some stuff today. I think we can do it. And don’t you feel it? When you remember the house you grew up in, or the cabin by the creek, or that time you camped by the pond and you heard it, the sweet music of frog lust? Don’t you want it? That song, that reminder of wildness and how easy it is to be reborn when spring comes a calling?

It’s nearly summer now, but we still have coldness, rain. It is still a good time to plant seeds. Plus, the solstice is coming up, which is a good time to sing intent. So I will plant this seed, my face close to the earth, my fingernails stuffed with what is good and fertile. And on Monday I will do what I haven’t done in a few years, since mommy busy-ness knocked the ritual out of me. I will celebrate the solstice on the beach. The Fox is old enough to drag a stick in the sand with me, and sing, and draw pictures for the sun to see and bless and bring into bloom.

Frogs in the city. Again.

Thanks to flickr user Damian D for "Pacific Tree Frog", and flickr user Simple Circle Photography for "Pacific Tree Frog hiding on my Rostov sunflower. "

Hot Cougar Love

(This post from a piece I wrote in September, now offered in our low, low spring sale!)

There are two definitions of “Cougar.” One is the definition I was looking for today: “The Cougar (Puma concolor), also known as puma, mountain lion, catamount, or panther, is a mammal of the Felidae family, native to the Americas.” I was looking up that kind of cougar on the internet and on the left side of the screen I got the headlines I was looking for: “Cougar spotted in Seattle.” “Discovery Park closed for Labor Day weekend.” Those headlines on the left. And on the right, marching down the sponsored links column: Cougardate.com. Hotcougarlove.com. Married Cougars looking for love!
Here is the other definition of Cougar: “A woman over 40 who is sexually interested in younger men.” From this, I learn that I am only old enough to be a “puma,” a cougar in training – or I would be if I were on the prowl for a younger man. I am thinking about this kind of cougar because it is my birthday. Today, I am a year away from that threshold. I am 39. I am thinking about the other kind of cougar because in my birthday card from my parents, a check to take my fifteen-month-old son, Forest, to Itty Bitty Camp in Seattle’s Discovery Park, which has been closed until Monday… or until they’ve caught the cougar. They have set out traps baited with fish and elk liver (not 25-year-old men.) And I’ve decided, I’m going to spend the money on spring-blooming bulbs and wildflower seeds. Being almost a cougar myself, I know what my son looks like to that other kind.

He looks like a potato chip.

I know what it is like to be stalked by a cougar, at night. Years ago, in the dry mountains of Northern California, I heard the sound of catpaw in the dry leaves circling our ritual fire. A long pause between every step. I know what it’s like to feel the glow of green eyes raise the hairs on the back of my neck and I wonder if he felt it…that little five year-old boy. Because there was another cougar in the news this week, not in Seattle, but in the wilds of northeastern Washington. She attacked the five year old boy when he was hiking with his family. She gripped him in her jaws by the head and neck. That is how they do it. They stalk their prey from behind. Cougars have incisors sized to slip between the neck vertebrae of their particular prey, as all cats do.

My son’s incisors are coming in now, long nights a couple of times in the past few weeks, but a secret gift, to get up in the middle of the night, walk in the dark to him, to feel him fall asleep against me again, as he once did. These days, when he is ready, he turns toward his crib. But last week, his head warm under my chin, his body heavy on mine, I rocked, caring not one bit for loss of sleep. I hold him and I think about the boy in the hospital, with head and neck wounds. He is going to be okay, they say. Maybe this is making me take our cougar more seriously. They say she came down the railroad tracks, down a wooded corridor. We design for this, for wildlife migration. By “we” I mean my tribe. The people who love nature, who strive to live inside it. I bet that other mother loved wildlife, to be hiking in the backcountry. She saved her son’s life by beating the cougar off with a water bottle. I wonder if she loves wildlife still.

I heard a man on the radio talking about the new cougar, the one who came down the railroad to Seattle. He said we should leave it there, learn to live with wildlife and isn’t this my church? I believe in predation. I believe in a food chain that is taller than I. I believe in God in those green eyes.

But this park, our huge park, is in a neighborhood. So is Ravenna Park, where the black bear ambled down into the city last year. The local media called him “Leaf Bearikson.” I am cultivating the wild in my small way, with my local eating, my gardening for wildlife. And they come. I’ve been amazed. I’ve seen tanagers and lacewings, hummingbirds and dragonflies. But look here. The large predators come and say, “I am wild, too.”

“I know this,” I say. I feel my son in my arms. I imagine the house I hope we someday have, in the woods, surrounded by old trees that make green dappled light but also, underneath them, dark places. High wide limbs for dropping down, sudden as a coat you can never take off. A coat with teeth and claws who, if she thrives, will have children of her own next year. I imagine the yard I wanted him to play in. A patch of grass close for when he is tiny. A wave as he disappears into the bramble when he is older, but still small. Still a potato chip. Even at 11, 12, 16, a running boy is a flare of the nostrils, a flex of the claws. But I still love her, our Seattle cougar. And I think this: I would not hide that cage in the sword fern, I would not bait it with salmon and elk. I would build fences, I think, around our yard. I don’t want to childproof the wild. I want to childproof a small place inside it, and call it HotCougarLove! Call it “home.”