So that's what they look like.

Every year in northern Wisconsin a sure sign of spring is the sound of little frogs calling loudly from ponds and standing water in fields and ditches.

Again it's spring peeper time, and this year my sons and I went out to actually find and see the little critters.

I checked on the Internet and was told that it's easiest to catch them at night. Just take a flashlight and head to a pond where the frogs are calling. Use the light to see the reflection off their eyes and voila, you can catch a frog.

So we waited til about eleven at night and headed to a nearby pond where peepers were actively calling. We heard lots of frogs, but had no luck actually seeing their eyes or bodies. I guess I thought it was going to be easy.

It wasn't. But we didn't give up. We split up, walked into the pond and started searching the water with our flashlights. Eventually I saw something small and frog like swim down under some type of plant cover. I couldn't catch it. So we kept looking.

When I saw the next little critter in the water heading for the bottom I quickly reached down and caught it. After a brief celebration the boys and I finally got to see an actual northern spring peeper for ourselves. Yeah!

We were starting to get cold, so we put our frog in a bucket with some pond water and plants for cover and headed home. The plan was to photograph it the next morning and then return the frog to the same spot in its home pond.

All went well and the above pictures are of the actual frog in the story. Just after the photos were created we returned the frog to its home. When I was at the pond during the day putting the frog back I caught a different northern spring peeper and a green frog. I guess flashlights and nighttime don't make it easier to catch small frogs.