No one can remember when the first frog croaked, but they must remember where it sounded. The large and small ponds in the village are part of our lives, and they are also part of the life of the frogs. The frog needs a piece of the dark peace of the pond.
Night in the village comes late. It was already past the time to light the lanterns, and the village was still pitch-black. Adults do not enter the door, we do not turn on the lights. But the croaking of frogs arrived as promised. At first, there were only sporadic “quacks”, coming from a certain corner of the pond. After a while, the croaking of frogs in the pond became very powerful, one sound was heavy, and the other sound was soft, and it was impossible to tell which direction it came from the pond. Then the sound of frogs croaking in the whole village became one piece. When the parents came back from the farmland, the croaking of frogs seemed to be wave after wave.
After dinner, the village was once again immersed in darkness. Occasionally when the lights are turned on, it is because people are busy with some work. The women are spinning under the lamps, and the men are repairing farm tools. Most of us kids are restless and never go to bed without a yawn. Parents rarely control us and let us play, as long as we don’t hinder them from talking and doing things. Adults are talking under the light, often talking alone, and the people next to them are at most interrupting. The atmosphere was similar to a meeting in the production team. The team leader was speaking, and the members were silent and listening.
Adults start out softly, but then have to speak louder. The croaking of frogs outside has become one, and almost all the frogs have gathered together. Although the formation sounded a bit chaotic, the free frogs were not chaotic, but rather like the moonlight in the village slowly moving through the night, dripping into everyone’s dreams. Quack… croak… cluck, drifting into the hut from time to time. On a quiet night, the humid air is filled with the fragrance of rape blossoms and the lingering smell of grass. The cry of frogs seems to be lingering, approaching the lights like beans. That dripping, that kind of heartiness, thicker and thicker, makes us infinitely reverie. The pond in the daytime allows us to seek pleasure wantonly, but does the frog follow our breath just to seek a voice in the dark village? Or just to seek a mate and give us the pond back. A month later, many small tadpoles appeared in the pond, dragging their tails to come and go freely in the water, and the frogs croaked every night as usual.
Experienced old people predict the weather from the sound of frogs. If the frogs cry thick and loud, it will rain the next day or a few days later. If the frogs cry chaotically and urgently, not as calm and rhythmic as before, it will rain that night or the next day. After the rain, the frogs croaked more cheerfully. One singing and one harmony, one slow and one urgent, densely ringing like drums and strings, ringing from the east of the village to the west of the village. We often fall asleep in the noisy frogs. When I woke up the next day, the village was bright and bright, and the animals who came out of their pens, stables, and dens resumed their lives. The village returned to its daytime order. The pond is still a little bit golden in the sun like a mirror, and there are strings of dewdrops hanging on the green water plants. The occasional crisp “plop” sound makes us feel that the frogs have given up the pond to the village again.
When the frogs start to croak, it is often the busiest time in the farmland. In order not to harm the frogs, the adults will use sticks to drive the crops into the crop field before removing the insects, in order to keep the frogs away and avoid being poisoned by pesticides. The elderly are not allowed to catch frogs, let alone eat them. Elderly people like to look forward to a year’s harvest amidst the dense frog croaking. If it is a sparse frog croaking, many old people will feel uneasy.
Although the old man made this rule, we children still caught frogs a lot. What puzzled us was that there were frogs singing everywhere in the village at night, but we hardly saw a single frog during the day, but we could catch quite a few frogs in the ditches outside the village. We dare not take the frogs we caught home, and sometimes put them back in the pond. They scramble to jump into the water from the woven bag, and the calm water is beaten into fine ripples. Do those ripples have memories, and ripples together with the tide of frogs every night become the soul of the village in the night?
One day, we found that the frogs were getting farther and farther away from the village and less and less. The sporadic croaking of frogs makes the village floating in the lights look lonely and thin. But the dog consciously curled up beside the courtyard gate, its eyes continued to shine loyally under the bright street lamps, guarding its own courtyard, and seemed to be waiting for something.