News from Vermont #237 -- A Springtime Song

Burr Morse
Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks
Montpelier, VT
www.morsefarm.com

Hello again Maple People,

One day a while back I put on my other hat as a jazz musician and made my annual trip up to Johnson State College to be a judge for an elementary/middle school jazz festival. It was a rather unorthodox ride up this year because of the route I took; normally my "one track" mind leads me on the dirt road short cut to Route 12 in Worcester but I exercised my one once-a-year exception on dirt roads that day: "never in mud season"! I got in my car and turned left, down County Road to Montpelier where I took an "all blacktop" ride up toward Morrisville. Just before I left, Betsy asked if I wanted a great music CD for the road but I turned her down..."CD player's busted" I said, which was the truth but I had a different sort of "music" on my mind.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about spring peepers because their music just started here in Vermont; In fact I was right there for the down beat. It happened recently in the middle of the morning when I was out on our acreage with the tractor. We had gotten a permit to burn a pile of brush. I had just reached the pile and shut off the tractor's engine. As you may know, we have had way too much rain around here lately but at that point in time, the sun had made a momentary "surprise appearance". Instantly my mind went from the doldrums into a state of peak awareness. I remember looking at the nearby trees and seeing the beginnings of leaves and hearing from a couple crows somewhere in the distance. "This is good" I thought..."can't wait till summer blossoms". And then it happened...like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on steroids..."HAL-LE-LU-JAH...HAL-LE-LU-JAH...HAL-LE-HAY-LU-JAHHHH!"...the world was ALIVE with peepers! Their burst of song came in triple forte and not just from their usual swamp but from all directions...hell our whole farm is nothing but a swamp these days! They continued all the rest of that day and were still at it when I woke up the next morning.

This puzzled me because I thought Pseudacris crucifer, our common spring peepers, were nocturnal; had they suddenly changed their modus operandi? If they had, I was OK with it because I love those little buggers. I decided to start early and dedicate my day in Johnson to the peepers as well as the students. As I headed up Route 12 from Montpelier to Morrisville, I celebrated my "day off the farm" with wide-open windows, the radio turned off, and an ear peeled for peepers. It seemed, in fact, that their song followed me right up Route 12 past Wrightsville Dam where water was critically high, and on to the brooks and swamps north of Worcester. I stopped at a pull-off by wet lands on both sides of the road up close to Elmore. "Should get 'em in stereo here" I thought, but when the car stopped and I shut off the engine, there were no peepers. Strangely, when I continued on, they started up again. I was almost in Johnson when all of a sudden I socked myself hard in the forehead. "Hell those ain't peepers at all", I scolded myself; I had been warned at my last car checkup of a noisy left front wheel bearing!

As usual, I was very impressed at the quality of music coming from those students at Johnson. While there, I did poll several people from different areas of Vermont about the presence of spring peepers in their communities. Some said they had heard 'em; others had not but all of them looked at me a little strangely as though I suffered from some kind of Springtime malady...maybe a bit of "post sugaring stress disorder".

I came home through Stowe because there are some big swamps in that neck of the woods. My trip was largely uneventful ; the only "peep" I heard, in fact, was from that front wheel bearing...Argh...stupid, STUPID! I fully expected the creatures to be singing when I drove in to my yard but they weren't. "They must have declared a 'weather' day" I thought as I zipped up my jacket and went out into the atmosphere which had turned bitter cold. The next time I heard them was a few days later when our temperatures turned warmer but their song was much less raucous. These days our neighborhood Pseudacris crucifers are lulling me to sleep every night but have silenced by morning time. They are, indeed, nocturnal. The more I think of it, their raucous, twenty-four hour débute was quite predictable; just like the rest of us, it's a long, cold winter and when the first warm sunny day of Spring comes along, all God's creatures come alive with exceptional vitality, even the spring peepers..."REJOICE" they sing. " WINTER'S OVER"!

and the Morse Farm family