Froggy mystery


After harvesting some tadpoles out at Wildcat Bluff Nature Center last year and putting them in the pond, we have a nice crop of small leopard frogs.  It surprised me that we did because only six or seven of the tadpoles seemed to make it to the frog stage by the end of last summer.  Furthermore, I think it takes a couple of years for a leopard frog to reach sexual maturity. 

The large crop of small frogs we see this year could be the result of more of last year’s tads reaching the frog stage but I don’t think so.  All of the tads we introduced last year and then some would have had to survive to the frog stage.  Nor do I think they are the off-spring of last year’s tads.  Last year’s crop would have had to develop over the winter and my limited knowledge of the suspended animation a hibernating frog passes the winter in doesn’t jive with any further development until warm weather returns.

If last year’s tadpoles aren’t the reason for the large crop of little frogs, what is.  Well, leopard frogs do wander from their home pond during periods of good moisture.  That is how they colonize new ponds.  And I did see an adult-sized frog jump into the pond from the grass last spring but how in the world would any frog survive long enough to reach SA, which is an island in terms of biodiversity.  Where would it have come from.  There are no ponds close by that I know of.  Yes, last year was an extremely wet year and there was lots of moist vegetation, aka weeds, along I40.  An adventurous frog could have hitchhiked down I40 from some playa or stock pond, a journey of miles at the least.  Seems a stretch.

When I was a boy, there were lots of frogs in our pond.  It was a summer pastime to catch them.  Then one summer the grasshoppers were particularly bad and neighbors across the street from the pond sprayed to kill them.  They succeeded on a large scale and also managed to wipe out our frog population.  For the last sixty years, and including a decade or so when there was no water in the pond, there have been no frogs on SA.  Now there are and I’m glad but more than a little puzzled.

As I sit here in the cave and write this, there is an adult-size frog in the emergency well outside the window just to my right.  The well is covered with a steel mesh screen and the mesh is too small for the frog to have gone through it.  Maybe there is a gap somewhere but if there is I don’t see it.

I guess I’ll have to fish froggy out and set it free.  It has no future where it is, and judging from it attempts to jump out, I think it would prefer to take its chances somewhere else.  For the time being, Cookie the cat is keeping close watch on it.