Jeepers Peepers...

The common name is Spring Peeper, the diminutive frog with a big voice. Scientifically it is known as a hyla, and the one best known in our area is Pseudacris crucifer (= Hyla crucifer), the hyla with a cross on its back. The cross is a darker marking roughly in the shape of an "X" on the hyla's skin. It is a small cross because the hyla, or peeper, is no bigger than a man's thumbnail. But when the peepers begin to call you would think they were big as bullfrogs, at least.

Spring peepers, like all their amphibian tribe, hibernate. During the fall they work their way down in the mud in the marshes where they lived all summer, and their bodily processes slow down and thus they they spend the winter, comatose. When the vernal equinox arrives, when the warmth of spring begins to penetrate the bog, the peepers awaken, dig their way up into daylight, climb onto a alder bush or a cattail stem, and begin to call. It may be late March or early April. The temperature, not the date, provides the clue.

The calls of the peepers are perhaps the oldest sounds of spring. Their kind seem to have had the first vocal cords, and they use them in loud voice to proclaim the coming of spring, an ancient echo out of the very springtime of life itself. Perhaps that is why their shrill voices are so pleasant to our ears. They are elemental life at the eternal springtime, celebrating life and proclaiming the fecundity of this fruitful earth.

--The Spring Peeper provided the inspiration for Otschodela Council's Cub Scout Day Camp patch in 1979. Cub Scouts, as far as we know, do not hibernate in the winter.