meteorology and how it relates to mating customs

November 16th, 2007

Down at my end of the island, the South End, we tell folks it rains 24/7 …. Times 365 days …. Hopin the only immigrants and refugees will be a few water skiers and maybe some scientists studying the flora and fauna of temperate rain forests.  Truth is, it doesn’t rain much here.  Oh, sure, it drizzles and mists and everything just this side of heavy dew, but we live in what the meteorologists, that’s a weatherman who still thinks meteors control atmospheric phenomena, call a Rain Shadow.  I know, sounds like a bad radio show from the 40’s, but the South End, right after it was hit by asteroids, fell into it.  Never the same again.  Left a crater we call Puget Sound and after that the annual precipitation plummeted to under 25 inches a year.  Science.  A powerful tool.
 

     25 inches isn’t a lot.  I mean it’s not a desert, but frogs down here have to hurry past the tadpole stage and get right on to mating.  Mating on the South End — and let’s be clear, I’m not venturing into the neighbors’ bedrooms –– I’m talking frogs.  Polliwogs.     Mating on the South End has to be PDQ.  ASAP.  They can’t wait for Viagara or amphibiagra.  No sir, the pond’s drying up.  And I don’t mean that metaphorically.  Summer’s coming and the rains aren’t.    Evolutionary frogs – if you swing that way – they’d probably forget the tadpole business and move into something a little drier.  Your intelligent designer frogs would learn to pray for rain.  Me, I’m a South Ender.  I’m just glad I’m not a damn frog.
 

    The point I’m desperately trying to make is this:  us South Enders are natural born meteorologists.  You got a well that goes dry when you run the washer and do the dishes and take a shower and wash the pick-up and sprinkle the garden, you KNOW the annual rainfall isn’t all that much.  It’s an island.  And the aquifer isn’t anything BUT that rainfall that drips from October to June off my clogged gutters.  Maybe after the next meteor shower things’ll improve.  For us and the toads.  Until then, conserve.  And mate fast ……  the frogs, I mean.   

Entry Filed under: backhoe archeology (revisionist middens)