After 25 minutes of standing in the drizzle yesterday morning, I was reminded of the 1989 hit Getting Away With It by supergroup Electronic:
“I’ve been walking in the rain just to get wet on purpose”
But actually, my primary aim was to find a frog, which I eventually did.
It wouldn’t have been hard to find him if he’d been sitting on the grass like this. But he wasn’t, of course.
The Cape Rain Frogs in our area are vocal little things keep us awake all night when it rains, but they are notoriously difficult to locate because they are small (5cm long), well camouflaged and hide in tiny little burrows under the vegetation. When they’re quiet, you literally wouldn’t know that they were there. So I used the occasional croaks to home in on this little guy bit by bit, before finding him and ever so gently easing him out of his hole to meet the kids and the camera.
When he was making a noise and I was actively searching, at least anyone watching me would have know that I was doing something. For the other 95% of the time, I was just standing silently and attentively in the rain. It must have looked odd.
Fortunately(?), the rest of the family was still in bed.
After a few photos and some education, we popped him back safely in his little hole, ready to continue chatting to his local friends and to warn us of the next nocturnal precipitation.