This year I have noticed an increase in the local frog population. This is awesome to see as frogs are what many people call indicator species. This means that they are some of the first populations to falter when something is out of sync in the environment. In previous years there has been a low population of frogs, and this year there definitely is a high population, if the amount of noise is anything to go by.

Particularly I have noticed an increase in Pseudacris maculata, a/k/a the Boreal Chorus Frog. You can see them hopping across the highway at night when it rains… and you can of course see the aftereffects of their lethal journeys. I try and brake for them (or swerve) but I know that for these guys the highways mean death.

Moving on. The B.C.F is a teesy little guy, measuring at the largest less than 4 cm. That’s give or take a cm the length of your thumb. So counting them can be hard, especially since they have excellent natural camouflage and like to hide in mud and grasses.

Frogs and toads, of course, are universally thought to associate with witches, etc. What you may or may not know is that Frogs, in mythology, are essentially bipolar. In some cultures, such as Egypt, toads and frogs are considered symbols of life and fertility (see below). In other cultures, frogs are seen as wicked creatures, or as shift-people who change into frogs and curse people. Charles Leland had an excellent chapter in Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, by Charles Godfrey Leland, [1891],which you can find at: http://sacred-texts.com/pag/gsft/gsft18.htm And of course the Bible has plenty to say on plagues of frogs.

Going back to Egypt. In Egypt the frog was (as I said earlier) a symbol of life and fertility…. which makes sense as there were probably a LOT of frogs in the Nile Valley. There was even a goddess named Heket/Heqet who was depicted as a frog or a woman with a frog’s head. She was known as the wife of the god Khnum, and was said to rule over fertility and later on the final stages of childbirth. She was considered the giver of the spark of life, as Khnum spinned men out of clay on his potter’s wheel. She was even given the title “She who hastens the birth”, and it is said (although unproven, so who knows?) that midwives of Egypt used to be called Servants of Heqet, and women about to give childbirth would often wear amulets of frogs.

The amulets were often buried with the dead, and on them were the words “I am the Resurrection”. Fascinating given that those words are now common…. in Christian mythologies.

Not bad for the humble toad!


Sources and More Information:

http://www.egyptianmyths.net/heket.htm

http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/khufumag.html

http://www.naturewatch.ca/english/frogwatch/species_details.asp?species=2

http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/heqet.html

http://egyptian-gods.org/egyptian-gods-heqet/#more-297

http://www.archangelswisdom.com/Deities_Heket_Rota_Heqet_Hekit_Frog_Shamanka.htm (but beware, it’s rather new-agey)

http://www.khandro.net/animal_frogs.htm

http://allaboutfrogs.org/weird/general/frogtoad.html

http://www.angelfire.com/id/newpubs/frog.html

http://www.exploratorium.edu/frogs/folklore/folklore_2.html

http://www.paganforum.com/index.php/topic,7924.0.html

http://allaboutfrogs.org/weird/general/myths.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_frogs