09/04/2026
CBH may not be open, but Willibrew is!
On a wet night in March the ditch by the road is so loud you cannot hear the car. That is the army. Hundreds of frogs, arrived on the same night, all shouting at once.
The word for a group of them is an army, and the first time you stand at the edge of a spring pond you understand why. But the better story is where the army spends the winter, and the answer is in your leaf pile, frozen.
The wood frog does not dig below the frost. It tucks under the leaves, and when the ground freezes, so does the frog. Ice forms through two thirds of the water in its body. The heart stops. Breathing stops. What keeps it alive is sugar. As the cold comes on, its liver floods the blood with glucose, which keeps the inside of each cell from freezing while everything around the cells turns to ice.
In March it thaws from the inside out, the heart starts on its own, and it walks to the pond. So rake the leaves onto the beds this fall. The army is in there. 🐸
