
September 2018 – The Swollen Mississippi River at Memphis Tennessee
“On the morning of Good Friday, April 15, 1927, Seguine Allen, the chief engineer of the Mississippi Levee Board in Greenville, Mississippi, woke up to the sound of running water. Rain was lashing the tall windows of his home near the great river with such intensity that the gutters were overflowing and a small waterfall poured past his bedroom. It worried him. He was hosting a party that day, but his concern was not that the weather might keep guests away. Indeed, he knew that the heavy rain, far from decreasing attendance, would bring out all of the community’s men of consequence, all as anxious as he for the latest word on the river.”
Prologue/Rising Tide – The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 & How It Changed America – by John M. Barry
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2018 View of Mississippi River oxbow lake from my friends’ home near Clarksdale Mississippi…
In January of this year, a friend wrote from Clarksdale, Mississippi and said that they had temporarily moved out of their home ‘behind the levee’ because the Mississippi River was over the road. I immediately thought of John Barry’s book, The Rising Tide, and the weather history that led to that great flood. Last September the river was exceptionally high for ‘the end of summer,’ and news of high water in January made me instantly concerned.

Rising Tide and Lanterns on the Levee – Both books give a glimpse into the history – not only of the river but also of the culture – and we are still struggling to reconcile the differences and live in harmony.
It was time to read Rising Tide for a third time and refresh my memory. After finishing the 426-page book, I then switched to William Alexander Percy’s Lanterns on the Levee, his personal memoir that includes recollections of that Great Flood of 1927. His book opens with this often-quoted paragraph:
” My country is the Mississippi Delta, the river country. It lies flat, like a badly drawn half oval, with Memphis at its northern and Vicksburg at its southern tip. Its western boundary is the Mississippi River, which coils and returns on itself in great loops and crescents, though from the map you would think it ran in a straight line north and south. Every few years it rises like a monster from its bed and pushes over its banks to vex and sweeten the land it has made. For our soil, very dark brown, creamy and sweet-smelling, without substrata of rock or shale, was built up slowly, century after century, but the sediment gathered by the river in its solemn task of cleansing the continent and deposited in annual layers of silt on what must once have been the vast depression between itself and the hills. This ancient depression, now filled in and level, is what we call the Delta. Some say it was the floor of the sea itself. Now it seems to still be a floor, being smooth from one end to the other, without rise or dip or hill, unless the mysterious scattered monuments of the mound-builders may be called hills. The land does not drain into the river as most riparian lands do, but tilts back from it towards the hills of the south and east. Across this wide flat alluvial stretch – north and south it measures one hundred and ninety-six miles, east and west at the widest point ffty miles- run slowly and circuitously other rivers and creeks, also high-banked with names pleasant to remember – Rattlesnake Bayou, Quiver River, the Bogue Phalia, the Tallahatchie, the Sunflower – pouring their tawny waters finally into the Yazoo, which in turn loses itself just above Vicksburg in the river. With us when you speak of ‘the river,’ though there are many, you mean always the same one, the great river, the shifting unappeasable god of the country, feared and loved, the Mississippi.” Lanterns on the Levee –‘The Delta’- William Alexander Percy
Now several days before June 2019, my Clarksdale friends have not returned – except by boat – to their home, still untouched by floodwaters, gracias a-Dios. For the river to have been above flood stage for over four months in many areas – that is sobering and spooky news. After all, I am a self-confessed ‘River Rat’ and proud that I grew up a child of nature along the Mississippi River.

Mississippi River at Memphis 2018
Anyone who has lived along the Mississippi river has witnessed its many moods. How well I recall a summer of drought when stranded towboats and their barges anchored in various bends and deeper waters and waited for rains – and for the river to rise. I also remember the “Flood of 1973” when I witnessed the impressive power of the river well above flood stage.
My sister Kate and her husband and I rode in the boat with our father for a ‘short tour.’ From the levee we slowly motored through the flooded woodlands, past submerged ‘summer cabins’ and onto the vast waters of Lake Whittington, an oxbow lake which had once again reunited with the river. As we motored upstream, I sensed the immense power of the water beneath and around us. Perhaps I also sensed the unspoken awareness and primal attention that my loved ones gave the river.
Back on safe but not-solid ground, I witnessed many ‘marvels’ of that flood. Crawfish dotted the sides of the levee and were easy prey for tomboys like my sister Pat and me, who would catch them for an upcoming meal. The timbers on the flooded side of the levee provided ‘once-in-my lifetime’ fishing opportunities; fishing for catfish was especially easy, but bluegills and crappie were more challenging.
I also remember my sister Pat ‘catching’ a water moccasin which got loose in the boat and slithered under one of the metal seats. I was perched high on the levee but well remember her motoring back while standing on the seat! Pat will have to add her own addendum to that story, as I’m sure it’s more clear in her memory than in mine. I think there was something about using gasoline and maybe a fire to get the snake out of its hiding place? (Pat, would you like to write a special post about that Flood of ’73?!!!!!)
The ‘safe’ side of the levee provided new hands-on geology and hydrology lessons. I still marvel that our once-solid sandy loam became much like a sponge, and walking across the yard – quite a distance removed from the levee – provided a bouncy experience! The high water also affected the asphalt country road that paralleled the levee. Slowly the road began to crumble until one could peer through cracks and chunks and sometimes chasms and see small and – to me fascinating – little streams as if a miniature world existed beneath the asphalt! I never witnessed but overheard many people talk about tractors plowing in dry fields and then suddenly bogging down in a “sink hole” far from the levee.
Those flood waters could be tricky, and many days I took my ‘studies’ to the levee to prepare for exams. My preferred transportation was a horse, but I remember a popular song of that time that mentioned a Chevy.
Let’s roll back the years and return to 1927 and William Alexander Percy’s narrative from Lanterns on the Levee:
“My first overflow I recall as a very jolly affair. In town the water was only two or three feet deep and by picket fences and floating board-walks you could climb and slither from the north end of /Walnut Street, where the levee now stands, to Washington Avenue, where Rattlesnake Bayou once ran. Crawfishing was super-excellent, and if you fell in, it was adventure enough for a lifetime.
It must have been during this overflow that Father permitted me to go with him in a skiff from Greenville to the old Percy plantation ten miles to the east, where stands now the town of Leland. Overflow water is depressingly brown, the glare was terrible, and from trees and bushes hung snakes, which I loathed and which loved to fall into boats…”
Near the old river site of Bolivar Landing, my sisters and I grew up hearing tales of the historic levee break that occurred five miles south of our home. Our father told of boating straight from the front porch of his family home in the nearby town of Benoit. Old timers often mentioned ‘The ’27 Flood.’ Those three words, woven into the syntax of Delta drawl, were imprinted into most all descendants of veterans of that flood.
“The ’27 Flood.” “The ’27 Flood.” “The ’27 Flood.” I never groaned or winced when hearing those words; in fact I enjoyed hearing the tales and now wish I had asked more questions!
I remember an older and quite-eloquent black man who once shared with me part of that story. He said that the ‘authorities’ would drive through the towns, see a black man – or youth, point to them and say, “Let’s go.” He was not bitter, just sharing what it was like, and that every hand available was used to try to stop the river from breaking through the levee in the spring of 1927. The levee eventually broke near the community of Scott, Mississippi, located between Percy’s home town of Greenville and Bolivar Landing,
In his book, William Percy stated:
“…All of us who grew up in the Delta have had experience aplenty in guard duty, or ‘walking the levee,’ was we call it. The earliest reason given for this custom was the fear that folks from the other side of the river would sneak over in a dugout and dynamite our levees in order to relieve the pressure on theirs. I doubt if anyone on either side ever attempted such a crime, but, the tradition having been established, armed citizens must guard the levee all night, listen for marauders in the willows, and shoot to kill. A soberer reason for the custom was to discover weak spots in the levee, particularly ‘boils’…
…A boil is a small geyser at the base or on the berm of the levee, on the land side, of course. It is caused by the river’s pressure fingering out some soft stratum in the soil of the levee or by a crawfish hole. If the geyser runs clear, it is being filtered and is comparatively harmless; but if it runs muddy, it is in direct contact with the river and you’d better shoot your pistol, yowl to the next guard, and do something quick. What you do, if you have the gumption of a catfish, is build with sacks of earth a little ‘run-around’- that is a small levee around the geyser to the height of its jet. That stabilizes the pressure, and the boil is safe, but should be flagged and watched. The levee generally breaks from boils enlarging themselves and not from the river running over the top…
… So, during every high-water scare, Delta citizens walk the levee all night with pistols and lantern, nowadays with flashlight. If you won’t volunteer for that duty, you should return to the hills from which obviously you came. If a guard gets lonesome he may gig a frog, whose croaking makes everything lonesomer, or take a little drink. During these times the river is a savage clawing thing, right at the top of the levee and sounding at night like the swish of a sword or the snarl of a beast. It puts ice in your heart when you’re trudging the darkness on slippery berm and hoping not to step on a snake. Each guard walks alone, and the tiny halo of his lantern makes our fearful hearts stouter…”Lanterns on the Levee -Hell and High Water/William Alexander Percy
“I’d done so much guard duty during the years that I gave myself a holiday in April 1927. The American Legion boys had taken over the job and were handling it conscientiously and efficiently. Besides, during the three rainy nights preceding the break, I was in a writer’s tantrum, the remaining proofs of which are Three April Nocturnes. But all good men and true except me were at Scott, fifteen miles above town. There five thousand Negroes, innumerable army and Levee Board engineers, plantation-owners, managers and old time high-water fighters were battling with sand bags and willow mats to save a weak section of the levee. It was cold, and a steady rain fell, freezing the workers and softening the levee. The greatest flood in the history of the Mississippi was roaring south between levees that trembled when you walked on them…” Lanterns on the Levee -Hell and High Water/William Alexander Percy
…………
The River fluctuates according to the whims of the rain gods – and when heavy rainfall ‘up river’ combines with snow melt – those down river know to prepare for a rise. Scanning videos just now in the cyber, I see news of a ‘levee breech’ in Arkansas:
Dardenelle Levee Breech in Arkansas
(Videos and music and movies are warring in the cyber. Please forgive me if I’ve selected a not-so-good video update! I cannot hear it!)
I well remember my father checking the Arkansas City “Three-day forecast” in the daily newspaper, then checking the river gauge predictions for Helena, Memphis and above. Just like the ’27 flood was imprinted on his memory, I later found myself sharing stories of ‘The ’73 Flood.’
A new and perhaps even-more powerful flood continues to torment those who live along the river and its connecting tributaries. From the upper fingertips of the river’s beginnings to the swollen delta at the Gulf of Mexico, the river and floodwaters have disrupted many lives and threatens even more. Countless areas are at high risk, and even though our family mostly heard about the ’27 break at Scott Mississippi, there were many more breaks that I never knew about until I read The Rising Tide.
The Yazoo River ‘basin’ where I also once lived, has been greatly affected by this year’s heavy rainfall and flooding. Backwaters continue to flood communities where friends, past students and their families still live. John Barry’s book shows images from the ’27 flood at Holly Bluff, the petite little town where my mother first taught after graduating from college.
Holly Bluff was in last week’s international news, but this year’s flood waters are not presently from the Mississippi River, but because they are trapped in that ‘bowl’ on the ‘wrong side’ of the levee. I recall the back roads winding through cotton fields and along cypress-studded creeks and bayous in a pastoral area which now appears to be a vast sea of chocolate-colored floodwaters.
This Associated Press video shows the flooded version of the Holly Bluff area.
South of Natchez, Mississippi and Vidalia, Louisiana and slightly above Baton Rouge, Louisiana, The Old River Control Structure, also known as the Morganza Spillway, was scheduled to be opened on Sunday, but the opening has been delayed until June 6.

Barges near grain elevator at Vidalia Louisiana, near Natchez Mississippi.
Like a bronco behind a corral gate, the Mississippi River has tried during many floods to get past these man-made structures and scrawl a new route to the Gulf through ancient pathways. If the waters keep rising, how much more before they creep over levees or break through any one of countless weak and weary points? When the gates open, more farmlands and homes will be flooded; wildlife will have no warning.
Would you want to be in charge – to be one of the decision makers? Here’s a video I watched off line of a presentation by Dr. Y. Jun Xu, “world-renowned hydrologist of Louisiana State University, explains how South Louisiana is on the verge of one of the worlds most detrimental natural disasters in history.”
There are no perfect options; those who are below the rerouting of these waters are rightfully concerned – no one will know until the river writes its own chapter – best to divert and dole the flood waters out – if possible – than risk a break. Easy for me to say from my vantage point of the equator; if I were down hill/down river from a spillway about to be opened, I’d be trembling with alarm and preparing to evacuate. I would probably be openly angry. There are many variables and many worries.
If a new channel route should form, some sources predict that the future of Baton Rouge, New Orleans and most communities between will have little future. Drinking water would be an almost-instant dilemma; the salty Gulf waters will creep forward; sand/silt from the river will settle instead of flowing along on swift currents. Barge and shipping lanes will be choked. Supplies couldn’t be sent upriver, and grains couldn’t be exported.
Please keep an eye on what happens when the spillway is opened; I have witnessed the Great River’s power and will continue to follow this 2019 Flood with extreme concern.
Thanks to all of you who have sent updates, so very appreciated. Does anyone have recent photos of floodwaters for a follow-up post?

Oops – Nature bit back – Ecuador 2012
“… So the story ends as it began, with man determined to assert his will over the river.” final sentence from Rising Tide by John M. Barry
Reblogged this on Jude's Threshold and commented:
On the mighty Mississippi:
It has indeed been mighty for the year 2019. Thank you!
Wow. I am getting The Rising Tide…after last years hurricane here in NC the power of water is firmly planted in my mind…and I have no doubt that we will see that stormy energy again in the future…like those that live on the Mississippi River…this is a great article..so informative and I love the descriptive language.
Thank you, Gwen, and yes, you and Ed will both enjoy Rising Tide and perhaps other books by John Barry. Tipping into the Percy-family writings is another great option for more about the Delta.
I’ve been concerned about this year’s flood possibilities too. We wouldn’t be directly affected but we have friends who might be. This is an excellent account and I learned a lot. Most of what I knew about the 1927 flood came through William Faulkner’s story Old Man, and Randy Newman’s song Louisiana 1927.
Thank you for adding your own concerns and for sharing your thoughts about the literature and music about the ’27 flood. The song I’ll add in this comment, as it adds a lot to the post.
Thank you!
Like you I grew up as a river rat, albeit it was much further north. Mendota, the meeting of the waters where the Minnesota River runs into the Mississippi. And like you my form of transportation was horseback. Love the River.
We had some bad floods in the mid50’s. Two granduncles lost their houses, probably ended up down your way. They loved the river too and both rebuilt on their sites.
There are people who love the calm quiet (and sometimes-deceptive) waters of lakes and rivers, and there are some who are more at peace by the ocean. The ocean has always been too loud for me – and the wind a bit too distracting for longer than an hour or so… When we learn early to find solace in the quiet of the woods/lakes, – for me it’s like an addiction that’s never kicked – yet it’s also a life-enriching tonic.
Thank you so much for your feedback!
I agree. I will take the inland waters any day over the ocean.
🙂 si – it’s so calm and quiet there!
I sit and look out the French doors at the pond on my land. Through a copse and across the road is a small lake and nature park. Water fowl, song birds, small raptors, small animals, deer. I love it.
Sounds like you live in a lovely area – so lucky to have nature to greet you each day!
I have just spent the last week at a wedding in Fiji. The bride’s family, who were present, live in Vicksburg. The topic of the river did crop up but only briefly. They are concerned, of course.
Oh my! Vicksburg!!!! I’m going to have to check the Vicksburg newspaper-online edition and see if there’s news of that wedding! It was surely a lovely event.
Vicksburg is located on a high bluff, then slopes down to the river.. just north of Vicksburg is where the hills merge with the Delta..
Wow wow wow, I’m still amazed that you spent ‘special time’ with people from Vicksburg!
I am amazed too. The Best Man related the story of how we all came to be together at the wedding on a beach in Fiji. I hope someone recorded the speech. It is a story for the family history books.
Sounds beautiful! Thank you for sharing this story!
A cautionary tale, beautifully told, Lisa. God bless 😍💕
Your words touch my heart….Thank you dear Amiga!
The Mississippi River Valley is some of the most fertile soil in the world with top soil depths reaching 100’s of feet! It is this way because of flooding and deposits
made that enrich the ground almost on a regular basis.
Routine life here has NEVER been easy through the eons no matter the occupants.
Thank you Lisa for your extensive look into the life and times of the Mississippi River Valley with your great photos and story. enjoy your day dear friend.
Thank you for your beautiful feedback, Eddie, and for the lovely way that you see things from a wise and neutral stance. I remember a mentor of mine who was an engineer, and he said that once ‘they’ tried to measure how deep that alluvial topsoil went – and never discovered the answer! I was a teenager when he told me that, and I have forgotten the details of how far they did reach.
You have published some really nice posts this week, and the pages have been ‘opened’ but still waiting for a ‘refresh’ so I can see them in your intended format – with images!
Though it’s clearly torture to be downriver right now, waiting, it must also be a very anxious kind of torture to be watching so far from your original land to see what happens to it. I hope you will keep busy, amiga. I enjoyed Percy’s writing, by the way, thank you for the introduction.
Thank you, and his writings paired with John Barry’s story help show a more-personal side. The forward to his book is interesting – opens with a lovely recollection by his nephew.
I read your post while off line last night, and now back at the cyber I’ll get to see the images! It’s nice – in a way – to see the words brought to life!
I have a much longer, more detailed response to your comment on my current post, re: the effect on the state of Mississippi of opening the Bonnet Carré, the timetable for opening Morganza, and a few other assorted tidbits. I threw in a couple of links, too.
One of my concerns is that they’ve closed the pontoon bridge from Butte LaRose to Henderson, so the only way out, if things go wrong, is I-10. Anyway, we’ll see. The biggest problem right now seems to be the infusion of fresh water into the Mississippi Sound, and the flow of pollutants. From what I’ve read in papers like the Sun Sentinel, the Mississippi folks are getting more than a little miffed about suffering all the negative effects secondary to saving Louisiana cities. They’ve seen this dynamic at work before.
Thank you so much for your feedback, which of course I always respect in matters of weather and water and even varnishing and humidity!!!! Thank you. This is when it would be nice to have internet at home – to keep a closer eye on the changes.
Thanks Linda!
So great to see you today!
Pam
Sent from my iPhone
aha! Thank you, and so great to see you as well! Your comment gave me a big smile but even better was seeing you in person!!1 Thank you!
Wow. I’ve never lived along a river, but I did live out in the desert near a wash. A wash is simply a dry river that becomes a raging one during our rainy season.
One summer I was chased out of my home twice by floodwaters. And the flood was relatively small and brief. Nothing like what the people along the river face.
Those surprise floods can be equally dangerous, and they certainly remind us that nothing is certain… perhaps those are little lessons – to always expect the unexpected – and to be prepared?
Water is a daunting force, just as destructive as fire. And it seems like we are always ruled by the whims of water. Either too much or too little of it. While I’m not easily frightened, both water and fire frighten me.
Fire frightens me more.. that would be a really horrid death, but then again, not being able to breathe would be equally horrible.
I remember long ago seeing a black-widow spider over the dark stairway to a storm shelter. I needed to go there to get something from a box of ‘stuff’ and sat there at stared at the spider. I stated, “I think I’d rather be bitten by a snake than a spider…” got the courage to go past the spider (no problems) and while in that darkenedd storm shelter and sorting thru the box, I looked up – and at eye level was a poisonous snake coiled in the top of a wicker basket… i don’t remember much after that except that i surely broke the world record of being able to fly from point a to point b= the latter being past the spider and up on normal ground! i never returned to that shelter!
Yikes! To be hones, I think spiders scare me more than snakes. It’s not at all rational and I fight it. I’ve even been trying to release spiders to the outside of the house rather than splatting them where I see them. But it is a battle. Death by fire; death by water. I have no idea. Both would be terrifying.
Mid-Earth Gringita, again you enlighten me to other worlds in a uniquely ardent and informative way.
Except for driving over it in Memphis, my only direct experience of the Mississippi River was on an outing during a year spent in Millington, TN, 1975, wandering back roads alone in a 1964 Ford Fairlane.
I suppose it was in the Meeman-Shelby Forest that I met her. I had never touched, and never did feel again anything so big, wet and brown, virtually moaning alive and moving in timeless abandon.
Soon my forest refuge here, 1200 ft above sea level and 100 ft above my river may become a refugee camp for people escaping the coasts. I heard an expert say this morning that they now expect sea level rise to be 3 to 9 feet over the next few decades. Having grown up by the ocean, on a river barely above sea level, even just 3 ft. is fearsome.
I cannot claim to truly empathize with victims of such world-drowning floods, especially not with people whose lives are inundated multiple times. Still, with your help here, I put myself there again at the shore of that brown-silted living-liquid expanse, and am not surprised by tears drawn maybe from sublime peace or from sorrow. Both, I suppose, not just because of that river’s world, but the whole earth it speaks for, and for all of us.
My take on rivers shows up in my 9/2013 post, one of my favorites. I wouldn’t peddle this link if I were not confident you’d enjoy it seeing it again, and that you would like it shared. https://thebalsamean.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/rivers/
Cuidate, amiga.
Thank you – in advance – for the link, and I will enjoy it when at home later today. If you were able to be transported back to the river to the point of tears, I think that your empathy skills are fine! Thank you also for your kind and sensitive comment, and for your empathy for those who live along the Father of Waters. |I’ve not checked to see how ‘those affected’ are doing today, or what’s happening with the weather.
O Lisa, a thought as I read through all the comments…have you ever thought of putting ALL your writings along with the pictures of course and your drawings, paintings, photos…what have you…into a few books? Your writing is captivating and the topics educational and enriching to our lives…I believe they would be useful to so many. Have you ever read Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens? the whole time I read this book I had in the back of my mind to write you and say…Lisa…you write like her and you have SO much to share…anyway…loved this post and all the comments so enlightening.
Gwen, your comment touches my heart! Thank you so much, and no, I’ve not read (or heard about) the book, Crawdads Sing, but it sounds like a book that I would love!
Lisa it is a beautiful story about a young girl who grows up in the marshland of NC alone…and all about the marsh and wildlife and how she learns through it all…it is an incredible piece.
but back to you turning what you have into books…you have at least three or four books …you just need to put them together…what you have to share is so important to so many…you are inspiring and creative and it could be done.
seriously. I know a few authors and writers…
anyway…it is a shame to hide your light under a bushel so to speak…:)
love
gwen
Dear Gwen – thank you again, and sometimes I take that bushel and stand on it to get a better view… and that view requires a balance.. One person at a time, but yes, it would be heart warming to reach a larger audience. Thank you, from the bottom of my own heart!
I second the motion for a book.
I don’t know how Lisa does everything she does, and all of it so well. I have a sneaking hunch she actually represents three people pretending to be one.
You two have put a big smile on my face… And then there’s one friend who suspects that I’m in an institution for the not-so-sane and am making this all up… but three people – that would be a fun challenge – to write via the views of each distinct person…
Your post so vividly describes the life of this mighty river LIsa, and it’s recurring cycles. Coincidentally i recently watched a BBC documentary on the great rivers of the planet. The Mississippi featured in so powerful and yet fragile state – the delta region has altered so much that 80% (?) of the islands’ land mass has disappeared impacting the filtering effect which ameliorated the force of the current flow. How soon will it become untenable for many people, and for those living with this anxiety in this changing state?
I am not on line often, and I get via email a daily update called ‘the Watchers.’ It tells what has happened in the past day – hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, meteorites, asteroids, etc… and I see where the parts of Texas and Louisiana received ‘a month’s rain.’ Time to check and see if the spillway was opened as scheduled….
We live in a world that offers beauty and peace. But there are times, when tempest rage, and winds howl. We believe we can master the elements, but there are times where we are humbled by the forces of nature.
You are such a wise and amazing and gifted woman! Thank you!
Many hugs!!
LIsa thank you so much for sending me this wonderful article… I have been so busy in the water from the great flood of 2018 here in Costa Rica at the http://www.riocoloradotarponfishing.com lodge that I have not had time to reflect on my delta roots. We had water in all the rooms about 8 inches but not over the beds. The yard was replenished with a nice layer of new silt which came down the San Juan river stolen from the clear cut lands in Nicaragua our yard had received this give of about 36 inches of top soil in the last 26 years since I moved here. I did not reflect on why I was never uncomfortable during our annual floods of the whole place and village. This past year while wading to the kitchen to cook and seeing a snake swimming in front of the stove did cause a bit of excitement. I also had a Blue Morphia butterfly who move in the room for a few days and kept flying back when I put her out. My most interesting guest however was a tree frog who moved in to a knot hole in my shower and came in and out to visit during my shower time. He was with me over a month and moved on to parts unknown I hope he did not become dinner for the snake. Come back soon for a visit you are loved and missed. Don Dan