I love nature. It hates me.
July 13, 2022
“Don’t forget the frog,” is a sentence that one might not expect to hear from one’s partner. Typically, the other person might remind you to take out the recycling, pick up some cat food, collect a kid from soccer practice, or blast Roundup on the weeds.
Around here, though, we’re facing what seems like a Biblical onslaught of frogs, one of which I recently captured and neglected to return to the wild. (Please don’t send the ASPCA after me. No amphibians were harmed in the making of this post.)
The critters descended after we installed a small above-ground pool. Longtime readers might recall me griping about the same problem in our former home, which came with a 36,000-gallon mini-ocean in the yard.
Though it’s a fraction of that size, the new one is like a hot singles bar for little grey tree frogs. Despite the name, their color varies from green to brown to grey. The one I caught was almost white, as if it’d been dipped in ash. They’re only a couple inches long, tops. But oy, are they loud.
Every night, just below our windows, we hear this racket. It’s so bad that if we crash before they do, we have to turn up a white-noise machine in the bedroom to drown them out. It’s definitely mating season. At least we haven’t found their eggs or tadpoles in the pool; one time in the old place we had a veritable tsunami of them.
The only way to curb the croaking and noodling is to catch them and move them to a little creek branch down the street, which is also just outside a big community pool. The evening after my latest relocation job, we heard a lone voice, almost plaintively calling out for an FWB (frog with benefits).
Originally published at http://davesswan.wordpress.com on July 13, 2022.
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