A Deafening Interlude

I spent a lot of time sitting in the bloodroot patch yesterday afternoon, happily drawing flowers in my studybook. The birds were singing around me and a chipmunk was scuffling in the leaves nearby. I thought I heard a loon once, which is odd, because we don’t usually see them here.
When I was done, I didn’t really want to go inside. The sun was still bright and warm, and the temperature all the way up to 72 degrees for the first time this spring. So I went on a walk around the loop to the far end of our property. I stopped off at the place where the stream enters the meadow beyond the fence row. It widens out there into a little pond. (That is where I saw the kingfisher last week.)
I sat at the edge of the pond for a long time, watching the tadpoles lurking in the underwater underbrush, and listening to the peepers. I don’t know how those tiny frogs can create such a volume of noise, but it is deafening when they are close at hand. It was so strange to hear such a racket and see no one. I have yet to catch a glimpse of one of these enthusiastic singers, no matter how hard I look. There was one in a clump of grass at my feet, I was sure of it, but he was either a ventriloquist or invisible. I never did see him.
After a while a muskrat slid out of the brush beside me and into the pond, and dived out of sight. He was almost close enough that I could have touched his wet fur as he went.