The Frog Chorus

Posted by Patrick

September 29, 2008

The following is from Andrea Wilkinson’s travel blog.

After a long day, I was ready for a nice hot shower and an early night!

But I arrived at my B&B to discover that – yet again – there was no electricity.

Hunting for my torch (essential for anyone travelling to Swaziland) I also located the candles and jumped in the shower – at least there was water!

I then attempted to read for a bit by candlelight and was about to go to sleep when I heard the nightly choir outside my window.

Now I have to say that birds and bugs singing is one of the nicest sounds in the world when you step off a plane, but at night when all you want to do is sleep, the novelty soon wears off!

I have managed to get used to the grasshoppers, cockroaches and other vocal insects that seem to enjoy serenading me, but the frogs? Arhhhhh the frogs I cannot drown out.

They are the loudest of the group, the lead singers and they never seem to stop for breath! They are spurred on by their backup band (grasshoppers et al) and always seem to reach a crescendo just as I am about to nod off!

Just as this thought was crossing my mind I heard a thud coming from my bathroom.

I didn’t think anything of it. It was really windy outside so I presumed that something had blown over….that was until I saw something hopping through my room.

The frogs had now decided to take up residence.

Luckily for me, just at that moment the electricity came back on. So I found the kind security guard making himself a snack and asked if he would help me catch Frank (the frog).

The next thing I knew he pulled out a fork from the kitchen draw.

I looked at him in horror; I mean I wanted him to catch it, not hunt it down and kill it!

It turns out that we had a slight misunderstanding; he thought I was asking to borrow a fork!

Phew!

We looked everywhere and eventually found Frank hiding under my bed!

But unfortunately, I’d found the only security guard in Africa who is afraid of frogs.

So once we guided the frog towards the door (me with the broom and the security guard standing in fear on my bed) we released Frank back out into the wild!

Peace at last!

Until another one jumped in (bearing in mind the ledge is 5ft, how high can these frogs jump???)
I looked everywhere for Freddy (Frank’s brother perhaps?) In the shower, under the bed, but it seems it was a room for two tonight!

And it wasn’t long before the live duet commenced.