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{previous} {next}Talking of frogs…..
November 12th, 2011
by Mike Leggett
Basin Frog Blues (detail)
- Basin frog
Basin frog is back…… it has small green flecks on its back and yesterday I removed him/her out of the washing waste pipe in the laundry, where he’d been in residence for several weeks and put her at the edge of the garden near the storm water drain. This morning the shiny eyes were back in the waste pipe…… Was it another frog of the same kind? I don’t think so……. I’m pretty sure it was the same frog back where he could watch laundry activity, away from the dangers of red bellies and kookies….. maybe she lives on passing mozzies? Maybe it heard that Gaddafi had been found in a drain and was acting out a similar gesture of defiance……. Frogs don’t talk though.
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November 13th, 2011 at 22:14
How lucky you are to have a dear little frog to supervise your laundry activities! I wonder what sort of frog it is. Hollis would have been most pleased to see it. He just learnt to say ‘Frooo!’ We once had a tree frog that got blown onto our kitchen door window during a storm. It was most surprising to see the little lost amphibian from the other side of the glass.
November 14th, 2011 at 12:49
So Froo has now been identified; she is not a Basin Frog but Peron’s Tree Frog. No surprise that his climbing abilities are being put to good use in our laundry. I found this fantastic website on Australian frogs: http://frogs.org.au/frogs/species/Litoria/peroni/ The details on Froo include its other popular names: Emerald-spotted Tree Frog, Laughing Tree Frog, Maniacal Cackle Frog. Froo is in the middle of its breeding season at the moment so may account for why we found it had moved from the laundry into the subterranean storage room. Just on the other side of the wall is the sandstone which may well be her ancestors traditional breeding ground. Froo and her mob may simply be waiting, generation by generation, for this edifice, our house, to be removed. In the meantime, I moved Froo back outside and tried our fernery as a…… temporary waiting area?
November 15th, 2011 at 16:51
It only took a day for Froo – or another member of the family – to reappear back in the sink…. Froo the Fearless!
But is this obsessive desire to be back in the sink’s waste pipe an indication of biological determinism, whereby the species adapts to the conditions it encounters? Where and how is the line drawn between adaptation and eventual extinction? Is it a matter of the changing conditions drawn against a timeline? What might be called, the bottom line?
November 16th, 2011 at 22:42
Keep us posted on Froo, Mike, especially if young ones arrive at any point. We picture you looking onto Froo and her tadpoles inhabiting the laundry sink.