We’ve had a few queries after our recent move about how we’ve enjoyed the peace and quiet in the country. One of those has been true – the other, not so much.
Frogs “Ga-lump” or “Quonk” from the bog off and on all day long. You would think they would be tired by night, but just try opening the windows to sleep on a cool spring night. The courting chorus of tree frogs resound with a raspy trill. Just as the frog lullaby entices one to sleep, gunshots ring out. But not to worry, really, it’s just the neighbor protecting his chickens from a possum.
Nighttime also brings the cicadas stridulation (AKA buzzing and chirping) reverberating through the air, alongside the crickets rubbing their wings together to produce their own chirp. You might be interested to know that with the frogs, crickets, and cicadas the noises are serenades with romance in the air.
Heaven help us! The chickens swap one noise with another from daybreak until dark. The morning begins with the rooster’s wake-up hallelujah call letting us know day is on its way, “Cock-a-doodle-doo! Cock-a-doodle-doo! Cock-a-doodle-doo!” The hens begin squawking, quibbling over personal space. Then one begins to cackle as if to say, “Look what Marma laid!” (Sorry about the old Daddy joke.) Periodically, all day long when the rooster senses he’s no longer the center of attention, he throws out a repeat of his morning song, “Cock-a-doodle-doo! Cock-a-doodle-doo! Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
An early bird is soon joined by companions as his friends file into choir across the electric wires and in the treetops to pick up a chorus as backup singers for the rooster early in the morning accompanied by the drumbeat of a woodpecker rat-a-tatting on the dead wood of a nearby tree. Ignoring them all, you’ll find the bees buzzing from flower to flower, minding their own business.
In answer to the queries, we have enjoyed the peace of the country life. It’s been a good place to be quarantined from Corona. The quiet hasn’t quite happened, but the musical noise that surrounds us, with the exception of the neighbor’s gun, has been vastly superior to honking car horns at the four-way stop or the ambulance and fire engine sirens that used to pass our old place.