Feelin' Froggy

Hello there!

Wasn't sure how to begin this, lol, but it's a blog and I love to talk so here goes!

A small introduction of myself. I'm Faith, a 24 y/o work-from-home mom (I actually work on another forum that uses vBulletin so I felt right at home here instantly!) I have two wonderful sons, Aiden & Peyton. I'm married to my best friend, Michael. Been together 8 years this October! We currently have two furbabies, a Siberian Husky named Hermes that we adopted from a friend who could no longer afford to keep him and a Maine Coon Mixed cat named Daisy that we found on the side of the road. Love them just as much as I love our kids. Also, we recently purchased our second home. Out in the woods on our own land & twice the size of our old home. LOVE it <3

Now, for the subject that binds all us members together here. I have been a frog lover my entire life. I grew up on a farm with lots of fuzzy and feathered friends but always admired the little guys that we couldn't keep (we had an abundance of them in the little swamp nearby.) Just something about them caught my attention early on. I remember back in 2001, there was a HUGE mud hole on a nearby hunting club. I was just riding around on it and happened to come across it. It was drying up fast and there were 100s of tadpoles in there. Without knowing what to do but knowing I couldn't let them die, I went home, grabbed a 5-gallon bucket and drove my fourwheeler back up there. I stayed there for close to three hours, slowly cupping up as much as I could and putting them into the bucket. I rushed home and put them in our pool (it hadn't been used in over a year - a 12 ft. one with nothing but natural rain water and algae in it.) Mom said they'd die, there was no point. But I refused to think about that. The very next day, I went back up on the club and the mud hole was completely dry. My babies were still alive - if I hadn't taken them out, they'd all have been gone that next day. A few weeks later, we started seeing tons of little froglets around and in the pool. By the end of the summer, almost all of them had made it out and into the wild (it was amazing going out there day after day to see tiny little frogs littering that area of the yard and hoping away to the woods.) To this day, mom and dad still tell me they hear those frogs (or their offspring) every night out there. After that, it was all over for me. I loved those little guys more than I could ever imagine!

In 2006, after getting out on my own with my then boyfriend (and now husband), I went by Petco. They had tomato frogs for sale. I wanted one soooo badly. But due to some bad experiences with my previous pets (a chameleon and an iguana who I did not do enough research on, I take full blame for that) and the fact that I was pregnant, we waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Earlier this year, in June 2012, Michael had an accident at our new home and a bullfrog was badly injured (our yard has tons of them out at night, sometimes we don't see them right away ) I tried and tried to nurse him back to health. He passed a little later but my DH saw how much I put into trying to save him. So he told me this year, we will get my frogs. I'd finally have the pet I've wanted for so long!

Over the years, I've did research on 100s of types of frogs and toads while waiting for my sons to get older and more able to understand what comes with raising them. Both my boys adore herps of all sorts now and cannot wait until we have some join our family. I am so happy they share my love for them (Mike won't admit it but he's taken quite a liking to the critters too )

I found this amazing forum earlier this week and have been here every single day absorbing all the info I can and asking questions left and right. I've learned a lot of info I was given in the years past was not as accurate as I first though, so I am thrilled that I found this place and have had better info given to me. After an internal debate that seemed to take forever (and using all the information I've gathered), I have decided that red bellied toads are the best for our situation at present (who knows, later on down the line, maybe a few others!)

Got Michael to put in a shelf on our rarely used entertainment center in July. That's where I want them; in all their glory for everyone to see. So looking forward to this weekend, when I finally get to go shopping for our setup. And after that, the big day - I'll have my toads! I hope to use this blog to track it all, from start and throughout their lives (and ours as well.)

Well, that ended up being a lot longer than I expected. Anyways, thanks for stopping by (you deserve a cookie if you made it this far!) Hope to have many more updates in the future.

xoxo,
Faith