A "froggy" day!

I remember growing up in Kansas that we spent a lot of our summer evening hours out doors. We would play kickball, kick the can and we also caught frogs and had frog races! Great fun! Thankfully I didn't end up with wort's on my fingers as a result of catching all those frogs! Of course, that could be an old wives tale for all I know.

You never know when you may have an opportunity for a nature study, big or small, keep your eyes open so you don't miss it. Yesterday our day started out a little rough, we woke to a broken coffee maker and our garage had taken in some water from the storm the night before so Riley and I were cleaning up the mess. After we finished cleaning the garage, I decided to trim the grass in the area below our faucet, the grass was so tall. As I tackled the small area something scooted through the grass to get away from the trimmer, so I put it down to go investigate.

Riley came over to see what I was looking for. As we looked and moved things aside we found a fairly good sized frog! At first I thought it was a bullfrog but then decided we should look it up. After looking at some pictures Riley thought it was a Southern Leopard Frog and Chris thought it was a Wood Frog. Y'all look below and see what you think.



We read they like to eat spiders, Moth larva, snails and meal worms. Later, just before we were getting ready to let him go, Chris being much more brave than I, found a spider to pick up on the lid of the bucket. He brought it over and laid the lid down in front of the frog, as he did the spider bounced off the lid and landed about 6-7 inches away from the frog. When the spider landed it froze in place, as if it knew it was in front of a predator! After waiting with the video camera for a few minutes we gently scooted the spider closer to the frog. As we did the spider got within 2-3 inches of the frog, rolled over and folded it's legs up as if it were dead! After it laid there a little bit I guess it became confident that the frog would not eat it because it got up and walked back to the lid it arrived on. Aren't God's creatures amazing?

In our efforts to feed the frog an earthworm wound it's way around the frogs legs and we laid a moth larva in front of it as well. He was not hungry, I'm sure we stressed him out greatly so at that point we allowed him to hop off. With some giggles and jigs as the frog hopped through our legs and under the truck he finally hopped into the grass and burrowed himself as deep as he could go. We enjoyed our little nature study on our resident Southern Leopard Frog/Wood Frog. We still aren't sure which on it is but it was a nice little diversion from the stress of a broken coffee maker and water in the garage!