Screech of Terror

A bone-chilling screech brought me to my feet. Heart hammering in my chest, I stood frozen in place - trying to make sense of what had just happened.

I had been sitting on the back porch in a near doze - that state where I was not quite asleep, but not really awake either. The screech had been so loud that I was now certain I would find some catastrophe at my doorstep.

But as I looked around, I found nothing out of place - no cats engaged in fighting - no children screaming - no one racing through the back yard in terror. So what had happened?

Lacking an unfolding, my breathing slowed, my blood pressure dropped and....

I nearly jumped right out of my shoes when the screech came again. Right behind me this time. I whirled, prepared to either flight or flee, and found - nothing.

Systematically I walked from one end of the porch to the other looking in every crevice and corner. Something was hiding someplace.

Then came the screech yet again. I stared in disbelief. Right in front of me, clinging to the frame of a screen, was a frog little bigger than the first joint of my thumb. As I watched, a sac just beneath the frog's mouth ballooned out and then....SCREECH.

All of that noise from that one tiny tree frog.