In Summer We Had No Fear Of This Creature, As It Buries Itself In The
Soil And Aestivates During The Hot, Dry Season, And Comes Forth In Wet
Weather.
I never knew any spot where these creatures were more
abundant than in that winter lake of ours, and at night in the flooded
time we used to lie awake listening to their concerts.
The
_Ceratophrys_ croaks when angry, and as it is the most truculent
of all batrachians it works itself into a rage if you go near it. Its
first efforts at chanting or singing sounds like the deep, harsh,
anger-croak prolonged, but as the time goes on they gradually acquire,
night by night, a less raucous and a louder, more sustained and far-
reaching sound. There was always very great variety in the tones; and
while some continued deep and harsh - the harshest sound in nature -
others were clearer and not unmusical; and in a large number there
were always a few in the scattered choir that out-soared all the
others in high, long-drawn notes, almost organ-like in quality.
Listening to their varied performance one night as we lay in bed, my
sporting brother proposed that on the following morning we should drag
one of the cattle-troughs to the lake to launch it and go on a voyage
in quest of these dangerous, hateful creatures and slay them with our
javelins. It was not an impossible scheme, since the creatures were to
be seen at this season swimming or floating on the surface, and in our
boat or canoe we should also detect them as they moved about over the
green sward at the bottom.
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