Thursday, June 21, 2007

here's a little ditty with summative modifiers, can you find them all?

The Coquí (pronounced ko-KEE) frog is so named because that is the sound it makes. Or more accurately, that is the sound of its mating call (which leads me to wonder what we would be named if we were so named for the sound of our mating call, but that's another story). And if you are in the middle of a Puerto Rican rainforest at night, this is the sound you will hear—all night long—a moonlight sonata played by 2000 piccolos all tuned to a slightly different key. This is the inimitable call of the Coquí.

It is said that the call from a single frog, whose mature size rarely exceeds a full inch in length, can reach 100 decibels at only a meter away, a noise level roughly equivalent to that produced by a chain saw, jack hammer, printing plant, riveting machine, or speeding express train.

This sound will accompany you wherever you go and no matter what you are doing—to bed, or trying to sleep, for instance—but it is especially prevalent if you are in fact crouched amidst the wet, leafy understory where the population of human is outnumbered by Coquí 50 to 1 in a single bush, a good ratio if you are a human crouched in the bush for the sole purpose of spotting and capturing the tiny, bug-eyed amphibians.

Speaking of bugs, those are also in the bush with you and the frogs. However, because I spent a significant amount of time crouched in Coquí habitat, I prefer to remain ignorant of the actual ratio between human and insect population, surely some ungodly factor that one should not contemplate if one is to continue frogging in the Puerto Rican rainforest at night.

1 comment:

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