Google and ye shall find, I frequently say, and it’s true. I went to my favorite search engine on the trail of the elusive (now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t) leopard frog who has lived in our shower since Winter. (See Spontaneous Generation.) I found several interesting sites, including one from South Dakota and one for exotic pet owners. Both were useful.
The leopard frog (I’ll call ours “Frogg”) usually lives in grasslands near rivers or creeks or streams. In the winter, it avoids freezing by living underwater. If frozen, it becomes a miracle – Frogg’s organs are filled with an antifreeze that will allow them to thaw after freezing. Leopard frogs live 6 to 9 years.
So Frogg has a future! And maybe a past. It’s hard to tell how he came to live in our shower, but my non spontaneous-generation ideas have mostly centered on him hatching there somehow. Don’t tell me it’s unlikely. This whole thing is unlikely!
We perhaps waited too long to remove Frogg from the bathroom. I don’t know how a frog’s hunting skills may be impacted by the wrong kind of environmental start in the formative stages. (I was totally impressed and a little horrified that Frogg found sufficient food to survive on for several months in my not-visibly-overrun-by-insects bathroom!)
My plan was to take Frogg by surprise while he was sitting off to the side of the shower grate and accessible. My method, which originated with insects and works on mice, too, would be to pop a clear container over the frog, scoop a dustpan under him or her, and then drive to the sandpit and return Frogg to a proper Frogg world.
You can’t make a frog come out any more than you can get a turtle to stick his neck out, though. It was June already when I finally spotted him in the corner. Steven and I grabbed a Tupperware container of appropriate size and sneaked into the bathroom. I asked Steven to do the actual capture because he can move very very quickly. To no avail – Frogg is faster than I’d given credit for, although I knew he catches bugs and eats them, something I’m way too slow for.
Plan B involved lifting the grate in the floor of the shower, and catching (I imagined) a hopping, desperate to escape Frogg. Luckily for this procedure, Frogg did not seem to notice that his ceiling was being lifted at all. He sat absolutely still while Steven calmly swooped on him, I wielded the dustpan, and we were off to the sandpit.
It was all pretty anti-climactic after that. We selected a site at the edge of the water, with grass around, and put Frogg’s conveyance down. He quickly hopped onto the real ground. I still wonder if it was a home-coming or a brave new world.
As you can see, Frogg is well camouflaged for this environment. His complete invisibility as soon as I’d looked away once reassured me that he’ll probably survive there, where he can find Destiny, or perhaps a frog of a different gender. And in any case, I’d personally rather be trying to survive in a real environment than in an artificial one. I hope Frogg agrees with me.
