Sunday, December 18, 2011

Raining cats and... frogs?



Any of my Auckland readers will identify with this post; it has been raining pretty much for a week here, and the persistence is becoming wearisome.
But even amidst it all, I was gleefully surprised to spot this green friend sidling his way up the outside of my ranch-slider door last night. I cannot recall when last I saw a frog!
As a child I would spend hour upon hour in the swampy marsh behind our house, stalking and catching frogs. This was not an easy thing to do, and there was quite an art to it. Frogs are very good at spotting you coming, and seeing as I did my catching by hand as opposed to net, I had to be crafty and quick.
I don't remember exactly what I did with them after  had caught them, bit I do recall getting about 4 in a day was a good result.
We wold also often find them (actually, usually tadpoles not frogs) in the water troughs around the farm. Tadpoles were commonplace in classrooms, (for me as a student and as a teacher) as we watched the metamorphosis then tried to catch and transfer the frogs back to a safe environment once they became 'frogs'.
I have no idea where this dude would have come from, as in where his natural habitat is here in Wattle Downs - no freshwater swamps or water troughs here. Maybe someone has a pond he escaped from. But as far as getting into my fully fenced property, maybe instead of raining cats and dogs it has been raining pretty green frogs. He was nowhere to be seen this morning though.

PS My dogs were interested, though not perhaps as transfixed as I would have imagined.

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