Fairy Tale Friday: The Winter Palace

They sing spring out of the ground; they serenade the summer; they hold out against the first chills of fall to keep the nights alive. They are the constant choir of the evening, and yet few wonder, in the frosts and silence of winter, where the frogs have gone.  Perhaps it's assumed that they fly south for the winter, or-horribly- that they all die off, like wildflowers, to be reborn in the spring.

In fact the frogs learned to plan for the frogs long ago. When the weather starts getting too cold for sun-loving think-skinned frogs, and the air is too thin for a good song, they go not south but down. The frogs burrow, swim, slide through the darkness of the earth and bottom of cooling lakes. And there on the other side of the cold they meet in their winter palace, warm and safe and with endless entries opened only by frogs,to practice their songs until the next spring.

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Almost all of my fairy tales are entirely made up (by me!), but this one is only embellished. Frogs really do burrow down for the winter, going into a very profound hibernation to escape the cold. Personally I do suspect they are rehearsing their songs in the quiet of their own minds; but science cannot yet confirm my hypothesis, and the  local frogs, reached for comment, only say "ree ree ree".

But yes, the frogs survive. You have no idea how relieved I was, as a child, to learn this.

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And don't forget, my contest is still on! One comment per post counts as an entry!