Monday, September 29, 2008

Dis-gus-ting

No, not the little Pacific tree frogs. They're cute. But their eating habits...

Well, we had to release them because we just couldn't keep up with their appetite for flies. We ended up with three - Gunnar caught one at soccer practice, Tate caught one in the yard, and then caught a garter snake after church, in the parking lot, which I (being a completely unreasonable mom) refused to allow him to bring home in the van.

So he TRADED it to another boy for a frog. (Wonder what HIS mom said?!)

But our little frogs... SO cute. We were keeping them in a small fishbowl, because we still had a few spiders in the terrarium. I poked a few holes in a piece of wax paper and rubber-banded it over the top of the bowl. Let me just say that when the frogs started croaking, the whole contraption made a VERY interesting sound! Sort of like a frog kazoo. Still, they were hungry. And very small. I believe I've read that they can't eat anything bigger than their mouths.

That may be wrong.

Tate threw a crane-fly in the bowl, and the LITTLEST frog went for it. He got about half of it down (head first) and then started hopping around. His little front legs went up to his mouth and I thought he was going to pull it out, but - no - he was trying to shove it in. (Oh, I am SO COMPLETELY CONVINCED that this frog is a BOY!) He finally got the body down, but the back legs hung out for several minutes.

Wiggling.

That's when I knew the frogs had to go.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my! I laughed 'til I cried on this one! Hey! At least your kids haven't asked for rats yet. Mine had them for 8 years... and my daughter preferred the "hairless" variety! Oh my! Big as a small cat, and naked...

Herding Grasshoppers said...

I wouldn't mind a rodent, but I just found out we've been offered (and accepted) a rabbit.

Anonymous said...

Egads! I'll bet that's what my little froggy does at night when he disappears. Oh, I'm so glad I haven't seen that yet. :)

Funny how we both posted about frogs in the same day... :)

leah said...

Hehe! We once saw a frog in Florida that half a MOUSE hanging out of its mouth. Now that was a shock!

We have frogs in this area called "little peepers." They're very tiny, but they have an amazingly LOUD croak!

Herding Grasshoppers said...

When I looked our frogs up online (Pacific Tree Frogs) I learned that these frogs make the classic "night-time" sound that movie makers like. They're easy to find and catch, and make a lot of noise.

So if you're wondering what they sound like, just think of the movies :0)