Covert amphibious base

It can’t be done. I’ve tried it.

For over thirty years I‘ve been trying to capture a singing spring peeper. No matter how slowly or quietly I approach, they always know and shut up.

In recent days they’ve been peeping from my pond. And from a distance of about 75 feet, I can see all their surface-rippling exercises. But creep within 25 feet, and the operation abruptly shuts down: all is calm, none in sight.

Ah, well. That’s as they should be: wary of terrestrial pursuers and air attacks.

But I am fortunate enough in my foray this time to spy some other amphibious maneuvers. Quite a few red-spotted newts have infiltrated the cool depths of my pond, and, to my advantage, don’t possess the capacity to detect my looming presence.

The olive-green salamanders swim with a side-thrusting motion of their tails, similar to the much larger and fiercer alligators. (These aquatic adults were more noticeable as juveniles back when they stalked the moist woods. Emerging after rains and showing their strikingly-colored red-orange bodies flanked with dark red spots, they then operated under the moniker of Red Efts.)

But now they have permeated my pond, and are attacking newly deposited gelatinous masses of green frog eggs: thousands cluster on submerged twigs and other vegetation, and the slithering salamanders feast. They sidle up to the edge, bite an egg, and spin their whole bodies (also like alligators!) to tear it off from the cluster. They swallow, serpentine back into position, and repeat.

I fire off a few clandestine shots with my Nikon and stealthily withdraw from the pond, whereupon the peepers’ throat-sac chorus resumes its nocturne drill.