From the Field Notes of Colonel Aubrey Fitch-Harrington, FRS

Observations Upon the Fauna of Southern Africa — Volume III (In Preparation)

“The African Bullfrog (Pyxicephalus adspersus) is the largest frog in Southern Africa. The male guards the eggs and the tadpoles, driving off predators considerably larger than himself with a bite documented to draw blood from humans. When the pool in which the tadpoles are developing begins to dry, the male excavates a channel to a larger water source and the tadpoles escape through it. This is deliberate habitat modification — one of the only documented cases in amphibians. The male does this before the crisis, not during it: the channel is dug when the pool is low, while there is still time, in the direction of the nearest larger water. The author notes that he had not expected to write deliberate habitat modification about a frog. He is writing it now.”

He heard it before he saw it.

The sound was large. Not the sound of something large — the sound of something committed to the sound, a deep resonant call from the temporary pan at the drainage line’s edge that established the territory with the authority of something that had been here since before the rain and intended to remain after it.

He went to the pan.

The male was at the edge of the tadpole cluster — visible, positioned, actively present. An egret had approached the pan twenty minutes ago, Cetshwayo said. The bullfrog had charged the egret. The egret had gone.

The male bullfrog weighed approximately one kilogram. The egret weighed approximately one kilogram, with a bill longer than the frog’s body. The frog had charged.

“He will bite,” Cetshwayo said. “Hard.”

“At an egret.”

“At anything.”

The pan smelled of warm shallow water and the specific richness of a temporary pool that has accumulated everything that falls into it through the rains. The tadpoles moved in the dark water. The male watched from the edge.

He read about the channel later.

When the pan dried, the male dug. Not randomly. A channel, from the drying pool to the nearest larger water source, through which the tadpoles could escape before the pan was gone. He dug it before the crisis — when the pool was low and the outcome was not yet certain, in the direction of the water he knew was there, for tadpoles that had not yet lost the pool they were in.

He wrote: The African Bullfrog charges an egret to protect its tadpoles. When the pool dries, it digs a channel to larger water. The author has two notes. The first is that this is deliberate habitat modification in an amphibian, which is not something he expected to write. The second is that the frog digs before the crisis, not during it. This is the note the author finds most significant, and which he records here without elaboration, on the basis that it elaborates itself.

The male held his position at the edge of the pan, guarding a crisis that, for the moment, had not arrived.