I’ve never particularly liked frogs. I don’t hate them, and I’m not scared of them. They just don’t have the appeal of a koala bear or a monkey. It could have something to do with the great toad shooting of 1977. Super Cop and I were playing with a BB gun behind the house when I shot a toad at point blank range. The toad died instantly with all four legs pointed outward at garish angles. The realization of how easily I took a life, albeit a toad’s, freaked me out, and I proceeded to wail and carry on as if I’d killed a real person. SuperCop was all, “Eh, what’d you think would happen when you stuck that gun next to his back?” And I was all, “I DON’T KNOW! I DIDN’T THINK HE WOULD ACTUALLY DIE!” It was the last time I ever had a desire to hunt something down and kill it. It may have been the last time Super Cop let me play with his BB gun.
Anyway, I’ve basically avoided contact with toads and frogs for the last thirty-two years. Until Saturday, when I met this little guy who changed my mind. This bright green fellow hopped into the yard, looking for a place to hang out.
Now, frogs and toads don’t usually look like this around here. They’re usually grayish brown with lots of warty looking bumps. This fellow was well….downright beautiful. And look at those cute little finger things.
His green coat faded and changed to help him blend in with his surroundings as he moved around. And boy could he climb.
He used those sticky little pads to climb right up the side of the house.
Not having seen a frog like this in these parts before, we assumed he was some kind of tropical critter that someone released from an aquarium. But when we called our friend at the pet store, he refrained from calling us goobers when he explained it was probably a common tree frog. And it was. I did what any good blogger does in a situation like that. I Googled it, and sure enough, there he was in Wikipedia glory, the North American Green Tree Frog. It seems they are more prevalent in the south but live as far north as our corner of Kentucky. And with the news that Froggy needed a tree, my animal loving husband who’s always trying to rescue the critters that wander into our yard set out to catch him and move him to a tree.
That’s when we figured out how high North American Green Tree Frogs can jump. And boy, can they jump. He jumped so high and so fast I couldn’t get a picture of it. To make a long story short, Hubby captured him in the wastebasket, set him free by the walnut tree and hoped for the best. I’m hoping he hangs around ‘cause he’s just so gosh darn cute, and I never thought I’d say that about a frog. Now the lizard on the back deck? That’s another story.
