When I saw them gathering in Portland, I was delighted.

Inflated, bouncy, adorable, dancing on little baby feet, waving little dinosaur arms, they captured the heart of the nation.

All over the country, inflatables emerged, a large family of larger than life. There were giant lobsters in Boston. I saw people in chicken suits, fish, and doggies, horsies, one giraffe.

There was a dancing hippo, right next to a caterpillar next to Alice from Wonderland.

It was Halloween early.

China makes the costumes. Their economy had a sudden uptick, as if they knew.

Oriental wisdom read the signs. They knew what was coming.

This Halloween, just two weeks away, there will be the usual, pirates and princesses and skeleton ghosts and Darth Vader, but there will be a plethora of frogs. They’re hopping ready.

I don’t know much about frogs, their lifestyle, the transformation from tadpole, like the caterpillar that transforms into a butterfly.

I know that frogs are famous for levitation, that famous dance the frog hop. I know that in Calaveras County they jump and people lay odds.

I don’t really know the differences between frogs and toads. I have the impression, like common knowledge, that toads are bigger and carry warts. I could be wrong.

I know the Princess kissed a frog, not a toad.

I do have a vivid memory. Years and years ago, on our front porch on Highland Avenue in Altadena, we awoke one morning to see resplendent in the early morning light a Golden Emperor Frog we thought must be a toad because it was so large. It sat on the ledge beside the door and surveyed its domain. It ruled over everything, including us.

We thought of offering it something to eat. We weren’t sure what toads eat. Frogs we’re told eat flies, but we didn’t have any handy. Toads might have a more refined diet. We didn’t know.

This was in the days before the internet knew everything at the push of a button.

We bowed in reverence to the Golden Toad which maybe was a frog, went back indoors and had breakfast.

When we came back out onto the porch, the Golden Toad was gone.

It had probably hopped off to check on and survey the rest of its domain.

We missed it. We consoled ourselves with the sound of frogs, ribbit ribbit, that we heard nightly in those earlier days when nature was not yet totally subdued.

Every night at dusk we watched the flock of bats emerge from their cave on the Cobb Estate. They came down from the foothills of Mount Wilson and began their nightly search. They swept across the sky.

Every night the frogs sang us to sleep.

Now the bats are gone. The frogs too. They are replaced by the Altadena parrots, more numerous than those on Telegraph Hill.

Things change. Nature adapts.

In Portland, the inflatable rallying frogs carried a sign, “Frogs Together Strong!”

I believe them.