The Mudcat weird timing is happening again. Why this thread now?

Last night I got up in the middle of the night to let the cat out and when I opened the back door I could hear hubby's car alarm going off. It's one of those repeated electronic sounds, like a loud but melodic beeping, with two notes.

I grabbed his keys and ran out of the door, thinking that the neighbours would be ready to kill us by now, with this thing going off for who-knows-how-long in the middle of the night. When I got out the back door and turned right to head for the street I suddenly realised that the noise was down the back yard.

I went down to investigate. Yesterday, here in Newcastle, east coast Oz, we had a full day of heavy, persistent rain, which we haven't had for a long time. It had obviously woken up the tiny frogs (about an inch long when crouched, i.e. not with legs extended) and they had migrated to our yard. (I haven't heard frogs in our yard in the 3 years that I have lived here, except when I brought a tiny one home from the supermarket. I found it sitting comfortably on a potted plant, so I bought the plant just to rescue the frog.)

I was going to put this in the "You know it's 2001 when..." thread, but maybe this one is more appropriate.

The interesting thing was that the sound from within the house had a different quality than outside. It was similar to the doppler effect, but I could hear the deeper repetitive tones inside, but the higher notes outside. Very interesting acoustic effect.

Helen