
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 25, 1991                   TAG: 9102250259
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WONDERS TO BEHOLD

EARLY LAST spring, on a day when I was in the county but not here at home, I walked one morning to a lake and sat at its edge watching a frog, trying to be as still as the frog was for all the time that I sat there. I thought that if I sat still enough long enough, I might see the frog move first. I might see his tongue flick out or his round eye blink.

I sat very still for a very long time. But the frog neither flicked nor blinked. The backs of my legs cramped, though, and my face began to itch. I began to feel that every ant for miles around was crawling somewhere on me. If I had been depending that day, as was the frog, on stillness to earn my dinner, I would have gone hungry for sure.

But I stayed at the edge of the lake for some time anyway - after I shifted around a bit - still watching that very still frog. He was so nearly the color of the lake's edge and so absolutely still for all the time I sat there, that sometimes I lost sight of him. Even as I stared directly at the back of his green head - and I knew that it was his head at which I stared - he disappeared. He melted into his greeny surroundings, perfectly camouflaged, without moving the slightest bit.

This experience made me wonder if naturalists really see all the amazing things that they see through patience, or if they see their sights merely through luck. It may be that no one sees what he's waiting to see. Frogs rely on the surprising invisibility of their motion, after all. It may be that the only thing anyone sees is the surprise of his life - provided he's there to see it.

Anyone who spent enough time by the edge of a lake, for instance, must sooner or later see a frog's tongue flick up a fly. But maybe he'd see a beaver glide into his dam instead. Or a black snake climb a tree. Or a great blue heron settle in at dusk. Maybe it's all a matter of being in the right place at the right time, with your eyes and ears wide open.

After nearly an hour of fruitless frog-watching, I gave up. The path from the lake back to the house curled up through a wooded section of pasture. Along one side, the path was lined with great overgrown hedges of multiflora rose; its other side dropped off into a wooded ravine.

But I wasn't in the wilderness, despite the woods and lake. I was only a few hundred feet from a major highway and in the midst of many cows. I, or anyone else who walked that path, had to watch every step for cow pies. So I wasn't watching for a fox.

But that's what I saw. Suddenly, just a few feet ahead of me on the path. A delicately-boned grey fox, with a floating tail and a bright, sharp nose and an air of determination.

I stopped still in my tracks - as still as the frog in the lake. The fox stopped, too, gave me a look, then trotted off into the roses.

This is what I mean by luck. I didn't find what I'd been looking for. But look what I found instead!

\ AUTHOR NOTE: Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.

by CNB