Last night, while loading some firewood into our shed, something hopped around the grass at my feet. I immediately suspected a moth, or perhaps injured dragonfly, but I was surprised to find a wood frog, Alaska's only ectothermic tetrapod. I grabbed the little amphibian and ran into the house. I put a bunch of my gecko's unused rock's in the cricket tank (there were no crickets), then filled the tank partially with water. Then in went the frog! It sat, barely moving, on one of the larger rocks before realizing that water was near. The frog scuried into the water and proceeded to float. Catsby realized that something was up and started meowing incesently.
I wanted to keep the frog, because during the winter, there's a good chance these frogs could die. They freeze themselves for two weeks at a time, but I felt sorry for the little guy. Gina reminded me that he'd probably rather be outside with his froggy friends, a point I conceded, so I let him go in our flower garden. I made Gina promise that if we found a frog in late September, she'd have to let me keep it. I'd like to help at least one frog get through the freezing winters!
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I used to catch these little gems by the bucketload and keep them in a terrarium, much to the dismay of my mother. There was a nice little swamp about a half mile from my house I would walk to near Cottonwood Lake and spend my summer days catching frogs. I even managed to find some eggs and hatch them into little tadpoles. Sadly, none of them survived long enough for me to take them down to the lake and let them go. I think it had to do with my softened water.
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