After weeks of snow and cold weather, it began to rain. It rained for a day and a half. Out on the frozen river appeared this frog. Where did he come from?..where was he hiding. The temperature was about to drop again, so I took him in. We put him in the fish tank. He basically just hangs around...trying to nap. Every time I find him in the living room, I return him to his temp home. I guess he got tired of that as he has now slept in this perfect little spot for a couple days. Since I "rescued" him, I am now responsible for him.......until spring or until he croaks...haha
It took me a moment to find the little frog :) His comouflage colour is perfekt! Good luck with him! This morning it began to rain with (icerain) us too but there are still lots of snow ...
ReplyDeleteBettina
FROGS hibernate at the bottom of streams and ponds where the water does not freeze. Woodland frogs find shelter under leaves and dirt. During the winter they freeze but thaw out and wake up in the spring. It may have been better to leave the frog outside where it could continue its hibernation...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-frogs-survive-wint
ReplyDeletejeesh....every time we try to help mother nature we end upscrewing it up...kinda reminds me of the story of the little sea turtles going to the sea the first time. The act of someone trying to save that first little turtle from the gulls, ended up causing the demise of the entire brood.
ReplyDeleteTwo winters ago in the middle of January we had a thaw followed by 4 inches of snow. I went outside to clear the driveway and found 3 caterpillars on top of the snow. I was completely amazed!! Needless to say, I brought them inside and put them in an empty peanut butter jar to show the family. (These are the kinds of things my Dad would do and we always thought him kind of strange and his interest in things like this silly, bordering on pathetic. Now I do them. Go figure.) I wanted to find out what kind of caterpillars these were and why they would be on top of the snow in the winter. I put in some celery stalks and lettuce and covered the top with tin foil poking holes in the top for air. I changed the food every couple of days because it would rot and frankly smell. My family would give me the pity laugh and urge me to throw it away. After a few weeks two of them shrivelled up and turned black and I threw them away while caterpillar number 3 was content to continue to munch away. After a few more days #3 dried out and turned black too. I decided to hang onto him for a bit longer but cleaned out the jar since there was no need to provide food any longer. As near as I could tell it was a Cabbage Looper, one of 3 major catepillar pests in Ontario, but I wasn't quite certain. The pictures I saw on the web weren't as clear of the detailed markings as I would have liked them to be. A couple weeks later we hear the cats running around upstairs. We go to see what the commotion is all about and there is a moth on the wall in the first week of February. It took about 15 seconds to put two and two together and I went to check my jar. Sure enough, only an empty husk remained and I had discarded the tin foil cover thinking it dead. I was thrilled! Even my family was excited at this turn of events. I was also able to confirm that the caterpillars I collected were indeed cabbage loopers. I then felt bad for throwing out the other two I thought had died had just gone into the metamorphosis. And then, like you, I was faced with what to do with this little guy. It's February, I can't turn him outside, he'll die in the cold. But then one of my cats solved the problem for me. She ate him. You don't have a pet snake do you?
ReplyDeleteAlex