MDC frog ID calls can double as cell ringtones
Jo Schaper
Somehow I missed this in the hoopla last year over the Year of the Frog. At http://mdc.mo.gov/nathis/herpetol/frog/id.htm MDC posted an online audio and visual guide to ID’ng Missouri frogs and toads. Tom Johnson started this effort many years ago, with first a tape and then a CD of frog calls, so that people out in the spring night could figure out just who was making a racket in the fishless ponds, road ditches, woodland swales and swamps where frogs and toads breed from late February to mid-summer. Getting with the 21st century, those same sounds are now posted online as free download MP3s, suitable as ringtones for any phone which can accept this format, or by people with the software to make the digital conversion to proprietary phone noises.
For four years now, every time my cell goes off, people look at the floor, expecting to see a toad, frog or oddly calling cricket. I suspect you can find similar MP3s out there for wild turkey, bobcat, owls, bears, katydids– almost any animal or insect that makes a noise.
Why limit yourself to yesterday’s Pop 40 tunes, or the small variety of ringtones on most phones? If you are an outdoors person, let your phone tell the world!
