Suffering from their own global pandemic, frogs have few places to hide from mowers, pesticides and disease. But helping them starts at home, right in your own backyard.

As Italians sang in hope and unity from their balconies last week, a different kind of national anthem played outside my window an ocean away. American toads trilled their hearts out. Clucking wood frogs plucked the bass strings. Spring peepers chirped a staccato soprano.

All of them were finding their voices again after a long winter. They were also shaking their booties just minutes before the spring equinox, as latecomers frantically rustled through the leaves to join the party. The frogs were rising, finding what sound ecologist Bernie Krause calls their “acoustic niches” in an increasingly noisy world.

Having just attended a virtual happy hour, I went to sleep gratefully but fitfully, the memory of my friends’ anxiety-laced voices and on-screen faces juxtaposed with the ancient calls of the wild that filtered through the bedroom walls that night. The eve of spring, normally a joyous occasion, was unfolding in a world very different from the one we lived in last spring, last month and even last week. And yet it wasn’t different at all, at least not for the frogs, whose symphony reminded me that for so many creatures living here among us, life goes on.

Listening to the natural soundscape “rivets us to the present tense—to life as it is—singing in its full-throated choral voice and where each singer is expressing its particular song of being,” writes Kraus in his book Voices of the Wild. But when we drown out those voices with our machinery and chatter, we fail to hear what the animals have to teach us.

Amphibians are also suffering from a global pandemic, a fungal disease known as chytridiomycosis that has ripped through every continent except Antarctica and pushed some species toward extinction. Like coronavirus and other deadly diseases, it can trace its spread back to exploitation of wildlife; the commercial trade in exotic animals is thought to be responsible for widespread transmission. Global animal trade also spreads the often fatal ranaviruses, which infect amphibians, reptiles and fish.

But unlike humans, wildlife can’t slow the pandemic by practicing “social distancing.” They can’t self-quarantine. They can’t whip out the hand sanitizer when humans invade their habitats with contaminated boots and gear, and they can’t complain to the authorities when poachers scoop them up illegally and ship them all over the world. They can’t go into lockdown at home and avoid others of their kind; they’re already in the only home they’ve ever known.

Flash Mobs on World Frog Day

The next afternoon, as the first official day of spring floated in on unseasonably warm air, we hosted a froggy flash mob in our backyard. I didn’t know at the time that it was World Frog Day, but the toads (who are technically a kind of frog) seemed keenly aware. They chased each other through the leaves, twisting into spontaneous toad piles—three, four, and sometimes five toads at a time in a frenzied, X-rated melee. They hopped off as quickly as they’d hopped on,  looking like puffed-up little muscle men before jumping away and revealing a side view of their tiny toadiness once again.

Toads usually look mostly brown and gray to my eyes, but during this spring orgy, they showed their many other colors: some were yellow, some rusty orange, some brick red, and some a combination of all of three. Toad colors can change depending on environment and hormones, and it seemed to me that our little serenading neighbors had taken a Pantone chart and matched themselves exactly to the fallen leaves around the patio.

American toads inhabit a small world, showing both “hiding spot fidelity” and an attachment to their place of birth, where they migrate back each spring to breed. That journey can be a few hundred feet to a half-mile or more, but in our two-acre habitat, toads may not need to venture far to find everything they need: a safe haven free of pesticides and full of decaying leaves. Mowing is minimal and reserved for paths; even then, my husband and I walk through the area first to give animals a chance to hop, crawl and slither away. Utility trays filled with rocks and logs serve as makeshift vernal pools, as does the swimming pool cover, which we leave in place until the toadlets depart for their terrestrial homes.

In looking for the party last week, the randy toads left no stone or flowerpot or seed-starting tray unturned, even peeking out from behind the air conditioner. But the decaying leaves were by far their favorite hangout. After emerging from the gardens and onto the patio and sidewalk, they’d find a leaf to sit on, treating it like a life raft in a concrete sea.

Honoring Their Songs of Being

Following another change in weather on Saturday, only one singer remains, occasionally calling but receiving no response. Everyone else is sheltering in place, retreating under the leaves until it’s safe to come out, until the sun warms the earth and the ferns unfurl. The toads will emerge again, as they always do, and they’ll make tadpoles whose toadlet legs will carry them to vast new worlds, where one day they’ll follow in their parents’ footsteps and start calling from behind the flower pots too.

In human-dominated landscapes, they’ll faces lots of competition. Research reveals that even vehicle traffic can have a host of negative effects on wildlife: In studies of different kinds of tree frogs, it has reduced ability to hear mating calls; weakened immunity; dulled vocal sac coloration; and changed male voices to higher frequencies that may be less attractive to potential mates.

Some animals press on anyway. Several weeks ago the wood frogs outside my window raised their voices against the backdrop of chainsaws and stump grinders ripping their way violently through the yard next door. In spite of noise pollution and relentless removal of habitat, wildlife will keep trying to be heard, speaking their own languages of love and distress, alarm and loneliness.

But will we listen? Will we stop to wonder if all that extra effort strains their voices or wastes their energy or takes away their ability to procreate? Will we consider why the frogs are calling from gardens covered in fallen leaves and plants while silence reigns in landscapes filled with turfgrass and pesticides?

It might look messy to us, but for a toadlet smaller than a clover leaf, this is home.

As we trace the links of the current human pandemic to exploitation of wildlife in China, we’d be remiss not to address all the other disasters we’ve inflicted on wildlife in our own backyards. No one is immune, but especially not animals, who have no way to protect themselves from our continued assaults on their homes. After the coronavirus pandemic has passed, humanity,  though deeply wounded, will survive. But the chytrid fungus—along with habitat loss, climate change, and pesticides—will still be threatening amphibian populations. To help them as well as our own species, we’ll need to change our tune and create a new global anthem that weaves the voices of the natural world with our own. We’ll need to honor solo acts too, staying silent long enough so the animals can hear themselves sing again. And we’ll need to learn how to listen, opening our windows and hearts to the lessons they impart through their own ancient music, their own frog songs of being.

(All photos and video: Nancy Lawson)

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