Mongoose Constantly Opening Connections To MongoDB

I have a Node.js app running in EC2 connecting to MongoDB that is constantly opening and closing connections. When I tail the log file I see an endless stream of:

Sat Feb   2 23:29:06 [initandlisten] connection accepted from X.X.X.X:54291 #700437
Sat Feb  2 23:29:06 [conn700437] end connection X.X.X.X:54291
Sat Feb  2 23:29:06 [initandlisten] connection accepted from X.X.X.X:42206 #700438
Sat Feb  2 23:29:06 [conn700438] end connection X.X.X.X:42206
Sat Feb  2 23:29:06 [initandlisten] connection accepted from X.X.X.X:34255 #700439
Sat Feb  2 23:29:06 [conn700439] end connection X.X.X.X:34255
Sat Feb  2 23:29:07 [initandlisten] connection accepted from X.X.X.X:49641 #700440
Sat Feb  2 23:29:07 [conn700440] end connection X.X.X.X:49641
Sat Feb  2 23:29:08 [initandlisten] connection accepted from X.X.X.X:54293 #700441

The connection is made once during the app startup process like so:

app.configure('production', function() {
    mongoose.connect('connstring');
})

app.configure(function database() {    
    mongoose.connection.on('error', function (err) {
        console.log(err);
    });
});

I have two questions.

First, is this normal?

Second, why would there not just be a few connections open for the connection pool?

Thanks