Riot in the Trees

During the day, we have ordinary woods. Trees , tall, mostly slender and only a few decades old. Maybe not even as old as I am. The occasional poison ivy shoot scattered about, a few huge, hairy vines climbing the sturdier trees. Some ferns. Ordinary.

There are hawks nesting back there - maybe not in our bit of the woods, but close by, near enough that I can hear them when they have something to say. There's the screech owl who sometimes sits in the trees that line our side yard, a reddish blob in the deep green of Leland Cyprus trees. We have our share of songbirds, too, and they aren't shy about letting us know they're there, and could we maybe fill the feeder?

During the day, we have occasional aircraft overhead, buzzing, humming, roaring over, people inside never knowing who we are, maybe not caring we're below, playing imaginary games of tic-tac-toe with their vapor trails. People mow lawns, whack weeds, children shout and play. Ordinary.

There are sometimes cars coming and going, long intervals spacing the hush and shush of tired on pavement. Delivery trucks rumble around the cul-de-sac, and when school's in, there's a bus that beeps as it backs up and turns around outside the neighbor's house.

At night, though...at night, our little patch of Earth changes.

At night, there's a riot.

Flashing lights, shouts, hustle and bustle, clamor.

Things in the trees begin to call out, escalating as others join chant of life, of continuing generations of whatever they are, desperate to be heard by the right creatures and missed by the hungry ones.

Frogs. Cicadas. Fireflies. Chirr, chirr, chirrr; flash, blink, flash; Rrrrreeeedeee, rrrrreeeedeee, rrrrreeeedeee. "Here I am", they cry, "choose me!"

I like to sit on the front steps and listen to the deep boom of the bullfrogs, the higher trills of tree frogs, peepers, and insects, occasional feline yowl or foxy yip for counterpoint.

The cacophony is so great, some nights, I wonder that the woods are left standing come daylight. A party like that in a human house would mean the need for rebuilding the next day.