Playing hide and seek with a lawnmower can’t be good for frogs. There was one doing just that the other day as I cut
my rows one by one over by the pear tree. I guess it was lost—there were no ponds or pools right there, only shade
and some long grass to hide in. Each time I came near, it would hop into the safety of the next uncut row as my dragon
of a mower roared by, belching bits of undigested grass. And it would sit, still as death, as I passed, but its heart
was racing and those periscope eyes were awash in fear and it seemed to will each tight bundle of stringy muscles
not to twitch. It had left the invisibility of our murky, overgrown stream barely a hundred feet away and was caught
in this netherworld between instinct and exile and its only way out was to stay one row ahead of the mower
while I tried not to be the instrument of some cruel force amusing itself in an innocent corner of our back yard.