Ribbit

Those of you with a penchant for early 70’s horror will recall ‘Frogs’. For everyone else - whose early teen years were no doubt spent more profitably - this low budget movie involved Ray Milland, an isolated bayou mansion and a hoard of mutant amphibians. Naturellement, it didn’t end well for the two legged cast and was, in truth, fairy dire - and I’d managed to file the whole thing under forgettable trivia for years.

But taking the pack for their final night time wander last week, it all came back to me.

As our French spring gets up a head of steam, the evenings come alive with the call of a thousand horny bull frogs. That they’ve all decided to don their medallions and do their best to woo their potential mates at the same time is, like an Essex nightclub on a Friday night, just one of those Darwinian things. If you try hard enough though, you can still hear the nightingales over the din – but it’s a fairly one sided battle - and no doubt makes the bird’s (rather more refined) courtship that much more difficult.

But by early May it’s all over – presumably because the testosterone fuelled host found that special girl. Fertilising duties over, Kermit and his pals have returned to their lily pads (never call, never write) and, with their tadpole offspring left to their fate, a blissful calm returns to the ever lightening evenings.  Right up to the point where the owls in the loft hatch their brood and spend the night screeching like banshees. Nothing like a peaceful country life.