In all my six plus decades of living here in New England, one of the memories I have of summer is how the frogs would be all over the roads during, or after a summer rainstorm.

There were so many of them that it was impossible to avoid running over some of them if you were driving along near a swamp, pond, or even water-filled ditches, and there were always crows, and other scavengers there the next day cleaning up the aftermath.

In the last several years there has been a noticeable absence of them in the roadways, even though they seem to be just as numerous as ever in the spring when they hatch and start peeping away in nearly every possible body of water that’s big enough to hatch in, and they still can be found in the fields and swamps around the area.

Have we finally run over so many of them that we’ve eliminated all of those that were inclined to venture out into the road ? Or possibly they have evolved enough to realize that it’s just not smart to do so ?

I would sooner think that there’s something on the roads that is causing them to stay off them, and the only thing I can think of that has changed is that the highway departments have switched from using rock salt to using the new green colored chemicals in the last few years, and something in them is staying on the roadbed, and possibly irritating the frogs skins when the rains get it wet.

Whatever the reason is, they have just pretty much disappeared from the roads after the summer rains.

Warren Rice

North Orange