The absence of a sound can be louder than its presence.
Miami.
For many years I have been the uninvited spectator of a seasonal chorus training. It always happened at the beginning of the rainy season, when my patio—and many times my adjacent terrace—would get flooded.
Suddenly, at the fall of night, sounds that I have come to call “songs” interrupted the silence. Sometimes they were louder and continuous, sometimes sporadic. I would go out, and the sound of the door opening would interrupt the rehearsal, but if I remained quiet and in the dark, they would start again.
Some came from larger throats; they were more on the bass side of the spectrum. Others, you would realize, came from smaller, younger throats.
In the mornings, when I went out to clean the terrace or move some furniture, I would see them—scampering, running—even though never in my life would I have hurt them.
It has been now maybe two years since I have been able to listen to their training, their singing, their callings. I have not seen them around—not in the terrace, not in the patio, not even out in the parking lot of the condominium where I used to see them so frequently.
They have disappeared. Did they all die? Did they abandon the region because the environmental conditions have drastically changed? Did scarcity of food tell them, “this is no more a good place to live”? I don’t know. But that they are gone bothers me deeply.
You could ask, “Why?” Now you can sleep without their “song” interrupting your sleep. Or, “Aren’t you afraid of them— isn’t it better that they are no more?”
It bothers me because for more than fifty years, since I read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, I have been noting a trend. Species that used to coexist with us have disappeared, and if you know anything about ecology, that is very bad for us—destructive Homo sapiens.
As for my present worry—my frogs that are not singing to me anymore, the ones that are not scampering away in the terrace or my patio, under my plant pots, or discarded pot dishes—I have the recurring image of this frog: green, large, and silent, looking intently at me—maybe accusing, maybe asking for help. I don’t know. But it is there, and so is my concern.
