The Sound of the Frogs

The pool was stagnant, and emerald green with algae, mottled dark where the tree branches bent low over the surface and cast shadows. Frogs called out in steady chorus, their rhythmic peeping becoming a drone, melting into the background itself so that, if a bystander heard anything at all, it would be the sound of the frogs going silent.

But they wouldn't (go silent, that is), because even if a member of the group, having been spooked by a desperately thirsty fox, jumped into the green glass, the song continued, the individual's contribution sinking into the murky depths as the algae closed over the gap he'd created, as the remaining members' voices likewise blended over the absent tones of the one, forgetting him, erasing him, the pond once again glass and the song now a dirge.

The frogs didn't mind—they encircled the pond and sang into the night, uncaring about the individual sacrifice for the sake of a collective conscience. If it weren't this pond, it would be another, and the song would still be sung.

Whether or not it was the same song, the fox couldn't tell. He felt at first that it must be different than the frog songs he'd heard years ago, when the pools were cyan blue and alive, water flowing from somewhere and exiting elsewhere. But as he bent his stiffening neck towards a small interruption in the algae-covered mass, tongue reluctantly but eagerly stretching out, he wondered if he was mistaken. Perhaps these weren't the same tones he remembered in his youth—the peaceful melodies that would lull him to sleep in his moonlit den, reminding him where he dozed off, ensconced by the body of his mother, that there was clean, fresh water, that the world was good, and here was home.

Perhaps, it wasn't just the decaying world that made him hear those same, peaceful tones as mournful now, as sinister, perhaps it wasn't the power of ambient suggestion. Perhaps the frogs themselves had changed their songs. They'd exchanged peace for penalty, hope for helplessness. Their melodies described the reality around them; reality had changed their tune.

Could the fox really blame them? Was he so different? Bacteria-encrusted streams turned him to search for water elsewhere; trash-ridden rock dens meant he did not sleep. The world dictated his rhythms; should it not also dictate the frogs' songs?

He withdrew his tongue from the surface. It was both relieved and unsatisfied, but he shook his whiskers and stepped back.

The pond had gone silent—he heard it go silent, and what remained was louder. It pressed on his eardrums and pushed his chin up, allowing his gaze to fall on the center of the pool's surface, where rings radiated outward from a stark black hole in the green.

One of the frogs had jumped in. The fox held his breath, waiting for it to surface. It did not. Panic rose in his throat—was this his doing? Surely not, he'd barely moved, and they'd still been singing while he took his drink. Times in the past, the fox had lunged towards the water, hoping to catch a mouse skittering near the edge, and several frogs had jumped then, their earth-brown bodies disguised in the mulch until he spotted their beady eyes watching him, waiting for his retreat.

But now—it still hadn't come up for air, and with a sickening jolt, the fox realized it was because it did not want to.

Almost as if his thought had cued it, the plaintive chorus rose up again, surrounding him as tiny voices wafted up from the grasses, drifting over the lifeless water until they seemed to hover over the spot where the lone frog had jumped. The fox's ears twitched as the mournful melody rippled across the water, somehow the same and yet different than before. In its cadence, the fox trembled, as memories from years ago swam to his mind: Bounding in flowing streams; curling up in long, vibrant prairie grasses for an afternoon nap; the wind blowing through oaks creaking with endurance. But before he could truly hold these memories of ages past, their edges curled and tinted green: The once-flowing streams stopped by remnants of nets and plastic bags; the prairie grasses charred and curling to the root miles from where the cigarette had first caught; the stalwart oak letting wind whoosh through its branches one last time as it fell to the logger's saw. The fox stared wide-eyed in his mind as the memories past fused with realities present, suddenly as indecipherable as the individual voices in a frog chorus. The pictures seemed to swim only for a moment before they floated to the center of the pond, to the jumping hole, and there they sunk away—forever gone—into the black abyss.

The song of the frogs swelled again in the fox's ears as he watched the algae move and morph, closing over the hole where his memories had gone and the lone frog before them. The chorus swayed now in note and movement alike, song rippling in the grasses along the pool's edge, the frogs' bodies rocking back and forth in tandem.

Perhaps he was mistaken, but the fox could have sworn that he heard a harmony missing—that the frogs had left a gap, either for his mind's pictures or for their fallen comrade, he couldn't be sure. But then the algae closed the final distance, and the smooth, green glass of the pond once again remained undisturbed.

The fox sat on his haunches on the water's edge, staring at the middle of the pond. The frog chorus continued, and the fox closed his eyes, straining to pick out the harmonies. One was missing he knew, even as the song blended once again into its singular droning tune. The frogs' melodies described the reality around them; reality had changed their tune—he had heard it. Desperate to remember the anomaly, or in some last act of defiance, the fox lifted his snout and howled one long, low note into the now-fading light.

***

The pool was stagnant and emerald green with algae, but now with the encroaching night, it was turning as ink-spilled black as the hole once visible in its center. In the dying of dusk, frogs called out their steady chorus, their rhythmic peeping melting into the grasses and the shadows beyond, forming reality itself so that, if a bystander heard anything at all, it would be the sound of the frogs going silent.

Pond near Elkhart, IA, Sept. 2025