den | One Froggy Afternoon

One Froggy Afternoon

I wandered into the grocery shop carrying a plastic container and a latex glove. The bloke behind the counter gave me a funny look, but nodded in understanding when I said I was from WIRES and had come to rescue the frog. I've rescued green tree frogs before, mostly from inside people's toilets, and simply let them go outside. This one was different. It had travelled from Tully in North Queensland, hitching a ride in a bunch of bananas. Letting it go into the bush here was out of the question. The frog wasn't native to this area and wouldn't survive the cold.

Technically it should go back to where it came from, but it's a frog. I'm all for native amphibians and think there should be more of them. But... frog. It would have to go into permanant care.

THe store owner handed me a styrofoam box large enough for 2 dozen oranges, and opened the lid. All I could see were the scattered remains of some celery tops. "It's escaped" I said.

He glanced in and said "No, there it is." I looked at the celery tops for a moment, then the owner reached into the box and pointed. There, almost entirely covered by the end of his finger, was a green tree frog. A tiny, tiny little thing, all crouched and flattened against a leaf. I put on my latex glove*, had the grocer spritz it with water, and picked up the frog. I placed it in my container. It looked forlorn, a little green spot in the middle of a plastic container. The grocer tore a lettuce leaf in half and dropped it in. A few moments later a webbed hand appeared around the edge of the leaf, and the frog climbed on top. I closed the lid.

One of my fellow rescuers specializes in amphibians, so it was off to Liz's place for little froggy. On the way there he must have felt safe because he let out a noisy call. Unfortunately a constable was leaning in the window giving me a breath test at the time.

"What was that?" he asked. I explained about the frog and he wanted to see it. I opened the lid of the container, the constable leaned closer, and the frog made a perfect 4-point landing on the left lens of the officer's sunglasses. I removed the sunnies and carefully shook the frog back onto the lettuce leaf. The officer was laughing as he waved me off.

Now little froggy is ensconsed in a clean terrarium, with a water dish, some ferns and a life-times supply of tiny crickets and baby meal worms. He seems to be unharmed by his long journey and run-in with the law.

Photos to come.

*Acids in our skin can harm frogs.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sounds like a good man, that grocer.

Nice work bats. Even though frogs are evil conniving little buggers.

You just say that about frogs because it's true.

You do realize that he's an advance scout and is going to use your mobile to ring all his froggy friends up in the north that the people down here are pushovers and they can take over with a butter knife.

And you've probably never even heard of Sgt. Frog (http://www.tokyopop.com/dbpage.php?propertycode=SAR&categorycode=BMG) before, have you...

"I'm not drunk, officer! It was a frog!"

You Sir, have the most amaazing LJ ever :-)

Rock on Batty!

Mako

This reminds me of a story you once told about a bird of prey - in a box in the car.....pulled over = AND LET GO.

What do you get pulled over for? Is security really that tight in your country?

BTW, I love your journal too ~ I'm so glad I added you long ago....

Police set up at known choke spots and pull over all vehicles for a random breath test. So that's twice a cop has had an animal experience with my car. 8)

Too bad you couldn't keep it. You could have called it Kermit:D.

I'm surprised they found it in a bunch of bananas and not a tarantula!

~Everybody looooves that Michigan raaaaaaaaaaaaaag~

(Obscure Bugs Bunny reference to a certain frog)

0/~
Highly deadly blank taranch'la!
Daylight come and me wan' go home!
0/!

Hehe.

Batty, I'm impressed that the grocer even noticed the frog, it's so tiny! I wonder how many more have come your way unnoticed?

Waydigo on the rescue!

Have the best

-=TK

I suspect that "Highly" in that song is actually "Hide the" -- in heavy Island accent.

Ignore the pornography references. (http://www.songcrossfire.com/harry_belafonte-banana_boat_song.php)

I have a hard time imagining a grocer calling an animal rescue service over a small frog. Are there so few small frogs in that part of the country that this was immediately recognized as a non-native species?

===|==============/ Level Head

Interesting. It makes more sense that way... I've been trying to figure out why in tarnation would they add in a line about a trantula doing nothing.

Thanks. :)

Remind me sometime to share with you an incredibly funny version of this song performed by Stan Freeberg, if you haven't enjoyed it already.

Have the best

-=TK

I have not heard that one -- but you might find this interesting reading.

http://povonline.com/cols/COL051.htm

===|==============/ Level Head

That article looks familiar. I think we've had this conversation before. Anyway, the file is going up... I'll send you a URL shortly via email.

Have the best

-=TK

This isn't the first time the grocer phoned us about animals. The first one was a tiny green tree python, so now he's always on the alert for hitch-hikers.

"One Froggy Evening," the perfect morailty play in 7.5 minutes.

The moral being "If you find a singing dancing frog with a top hat in a box, assume you're just being delusional and leave it where you found it":D.

This one, in fact. (http://www.frogsonice.com/froggy/mjfrog/index.shtml)

===|==============/ Level Head

In Melbourne we have a group that rescues only frogs - the lost frogs home, part of the Victorian Frog group see http://frogs.org.au/ We have rescued 2 from fruit shops.

I don't normally rescue frogs. I usually do small mammals and reptiles.

I'm curious about how you found my journal.

Aww! I love a frog story with a happy ending.

We seem to have a variant of these in Florida. I love the little buggers and I've made mine quite lazy beause I leave the porch light on for them at night. They hang about the light eating the bugs it attracts and are quite large and fat.

Unfortunately they DO like to stick to peoples' faces.

And when they land or jump, they always leave a rather WET "present"---

EEWWWWW!!!!

Hobbes said something about that: "they sit around drinking water all day just in case someone picks them up."

Have the best

-=TK

There is a certain mindset that impels one to make the moist of any opportunity.

===|==============/ Level Head

I don't mean to cast a wet towel on things, but that was a pretty soggy pun.

Have the best

-=TK

As a kid on a farm I was always catching the big green tree frogs which are the size of a cigarette packet. Invariably I'd open a hand to show someone, and almost always I'd have cold, clammy hands clinging to my face. I thought it was funny and never once when "Ew!"

Oh, and happy birthday!

"Cold and clammy hands" is not the problem; it's when the little brainless bas'tids PEE all over me that makes me go "Eeeewwww!!!"

About 45 years ago I was sitting in the living room of a fancy glass-walled two-story house deep in the country (owned by an elderly cousin). It was mid-evening, summertime, and the house was air-conditioned (a luxury at the time, but then this house, in today's dollars and real estate market, would be considered an exotic million-dollar+ "country hideaway".

As a rugrat I was wearing regular cotton pajamas, sitting a chair watching TV with my parents. Suddenly a little green tree frog popped up through a "weep hole" in the track of one of the sliding glass walls (it's amazing the tiny holes those things can squeeze through) and it proceeded to purposefully hop in a perfectly straight line all the way across the room (a good 15 feet from the glass wall)---to hop and climb right up the INSIDE of my pajama leg!

I screamed and jumped up, and quickly skinned off the pajamas in a panic to get the COLD, WET frog off my leg!

Little varmit was unceremoniously tossed out into the grass, where I indignantly hoped a wandering fox/owl/raccoon would give it the demise it so richly deserved...

The whole scene was like something from a "funniest home videos" segment---but of course that was decades before home video cameras were even dreamed of.

(And thanks for the birthday wishes!)

Snerk! Maybe the two definitions of "Wild Life" are not so dissimilar after all. :)

Reminds me of the time I was innocently reading a book in the bathtub when a daddylonglegs spider decided to descend unnoticed from the ceiling, then run out onto me and straight into the bathtub. I managed to avoid dropping the book in the water, whilst rescuing the idiot spider. Put the beastie on a piece of tp until it dried out and wandered off into the corner where it belonged.

I do like North America. Most of our spiders are non-venomous (or at least effectively so for humans), and the same can be said for the snakes.

I have a pale grass frog living in the potplants near my back door. It's the shady side of the house and has a handy insect-attracting light. The more wildlife I attract to my yard the happier I am because I really miss living in the bush.

Happy birthday to you! I missed it the other day.

I've lived in this house almost 40 years, and for a good part of that time there was a scrub wetland area right across the street, with a salt marsh/river a few hundred meters to the east. The county eventually filled in the wetlands and built a "middle school" DIRECTLY across the street, but there's still a fair amount of wetland scrub on the property.

We still get a fair amount of wildlife wandering through the neighborhood, mostly at night, and a few weeks ago I came home from work after 6pm and "surprised" an adult raccoon who was plundering on my tiny back porch. The 'coons can be heard squalling and squabbling with the neighborhood cats from time to time, and we have to keep tight lids on our trash cans. During acorn season we've heard/seen deer happily dining under the oak tree in the front yard late at night, and we have bumper crops of pesky gray squirrels every year.

Used to despise the squirrels, but now I enjoy their brainless antics; also the relatively recent increase in the anole population. Funny little lizards, both macho and gutless at the same time, doing "bad-ass push-ups" and displaying their red throat blades at us humans---then running like thieves to "escape" when they suddenly realize we're NOT impressed by their shows of bravado. If they were the size of wolves we'd be in MAJOR trouble---

House wrens, mocking birds, doves, hawks, owls---we have birds of some sort all the time, year-round.

I'd go crazy living in a large, sterile city...

My parents at one point had three fat American Toads living in or around the front yard. One night years ago I came home in the wee hours of the morning to find them sitting on the cool concrete of the front walkway under the light where moths like to bumble about. They were all sitting in a lose circle and didn't seem to aggravated by each other. I wish I had thought to take a picture of them because i haven't seen them since.

I used to catch frogs and toads when I was younger.The best one was in Colorado on vacation. I found an ugly species of american frog that looked exactly like the dark muddy ground around the mountain lake. I left it alone. It was good to know there were frogs at that elevation for some reason:D. I can't even catch Kermit much any more since they stopped running The Muppet Show.

*chuckles* I'll try to remember to grab gloves next time I find a frog in my bath. I had two small tree frogs in my shower on the curtain this past week. (In Oregon, USA. They are likely living under my home and coming up the oversized drain pipe holes in the floor)

Aww... sounds like a cute froggie. Looking forward to the photos.

Whoops - forgot to ask. What is it about a frog in particular that makes it unreturnable? Too hard to transport? Intentionally, anyway.

THe frog is about 3000km from home. No one knows where he came from exactly. He has to return to (or close to) his point of origin for genetic reasons, and to contain the spread of that fungus killing the amphibians.

oops. Should have logged in from work.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One Froggy Afternoon

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What's with the cops there?

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Frogs

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