Omakakii, Our Ancient Protector

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: ‘What good is it?’ If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” Aldo Leopold “Round River”

Spring came early to northern Minnesota this year. It was on April 4th when I heard my first wood frog or Rana sylvatica, whose calling sounds like tens of thousands of pebbles clicking together in a wild cacophony near woodland wetlands. Generally, when I hear the first wood frog, I know that the maple sapping season is near its end. Once the wood frogs emerge in mass and start their singing, it is certain notice to sappers that the season is over. The ancient calling of frogs has deep primal meaning that far precedes mans existence on earth.

It is when the wood frog sings that I am reminded how ephemeral mankind’s existence is in relation to the many other joint tenants of earth. The calling and croaking of frogs is so primal that the dinosaurs listened to them. The first frogs appeared on earth 400 to 360 million years ago during the Devonian Period which was a part of the Paleozoic Era, an Era in which great explosions of life on earth were taking place. The dinosaurs evolved later during the Mesozoic Era – the Age of Reptiles - 248 million to 65 million years ago. Even the dinosaurs were new-comers to the frog’s world. So a frog chorus by a secluded pond on a spring evening is one of those often unnoticed miracles of life that enables us to listen to the ages. It is part of the great continuity and thread of life that traces its source back to some primal soupy pond of amino acids morphing into life three or four billion years ago.

There are numerous frog species to northern Minnesota but the wood frog is especially interesting as it seems particularly suited to our region. It is a handsome frog of which its most telling physical feature is its black mask across its eyes. Its range extends further north than any other amphibian or reptile in North America – extending north of the Arctic Circle. It has a unique strategy which allows it to survive the bitter cold winters. Like any other animal, it would freeze but the frog manufactures glucose, referred to as “cryoprotectant,” which is in essence an anti-freeze. Although the frogs cells freeze solid as any other animals would, the cryoprotectant prevents ice from forming between the cell walls thus preventing the expanding ice crystals from rupturing or damaging the cell walls. This increase of glucose, which is a form of sugar, is about 60 times greater than normal. This would cause a severe diabetic reaction in any other animal but has no negative effect on the wood frog. Who knows, maybe the wood frog is harboring a cure to human diabetes?

Upon awakening or thawing, the wood frog enters the nearest vernal pond or wetland and immediately breeds and lays its eggs which mature and hatch well before any other native frog. The wood frogs lay their eggs together in large masses. The eggs are dark in color and are imbedded in a thick mass of jelly which also enables them to survive cold wetlands which may still have ice present. The tadpoles can tolerate the cold and mature rapidly which allows them to leave the ponds which may dry up soon and also escape the predators of the ponds and wetlands. It should also be noted that the wood frog, besides being the first frog of the season, is also the last frog to go down in the autumn. I have heard the clicking and clacking of their call as late as the deer season in November.

The wood frog is aptly named as his habitat is the forest where he finds refuge in the leaf or needle liter of the forest floor but he is never far from the pond. I have placed a plastic frog pond in a semi-shady spot in my garden. It has become a gathering place for wood frogs in the warm summer days. Often I will see as many as a dozen sitting within a foot of my frog pond hunting insects.

The frog, or Omakakii, is a critter who gives warning, not by voicing alarm but by its silence. Many times I have carefully approached my pond when the wood frogs have been in chorus but have all, in unison, become silent when I, or any other creature, approach. It is their silence that is a warning to all that something is approaching. Listen for their silence, it is an unmistakable warning.

The next time you hear Omakakii, contemplate the many eons that this amazing animal has inhabited the earth and think of his sagacity by alerting the other inhabitants of potential danger in his world not through vocalizing but by silence. And be cognizant of the mysteries of Omakakii… the many that are beyond our comprehension.

“Neither in body nor in mind do we inhabit the world of those hunting races of the Paleolithic era, to whose lives and life ways we nevertheless owe the very forms of our bodies and structures of our minds. Memories of their animal envoys still must sleep somehow within us; for they wake a little and stir when we venture into wilderness.”
Joseph Campbell