Melinda J. Irvine

It rained and rained in the middle of the night and my son woke up to the shrieking sounds of frogs below his bedroom window.

He eagerly grabbed the military-grade binoculars — given to us last year when our friends from Australia visited — then shrieked as loud as the frogs when he saw them in a wild loving frenzy.

Quoting from the David Attenborough documentary he had been watching the night before, he ran down to where it was all happening — looking for frog foam (fertilised eggs) in the pond.  He came back delighted (despite no foam sightings) to have seen groups of frogs piled on top of one another — hopping from one rice pond to the next.

Or coming unstuck.

The next day there were squashed frogs all the way up, and all the way down our road — my son was quite thrilled by their sudden display of life and death. Naturally, my only concern was making sure the strap on those military-grade binoculars was fastened firmly around his neck.

PS: When I say frogs I mean brown ugly things that look like cane toads. Ewww.