Strangely-behaving (wild) Cuban Tree Frog

[Kathryn Dorn]

This is mostly a point of curiosity, since the frog in question isn't my pet and I don't know much about him or her, but if anyone's seen this kind of behavior before, I'd really love to know what was going on -
I was driving in my neighborhood (probably about a half-hour after sunset), and as I was turning around a corner, I saw a Cuban Tree Frog hopping in the road to one side of my car. It wasn't in immediate danger from my car, but I paused to make sure that it actually got safely out of the road, and the frog just stopped in the middle of the road and stared at me (through the open window).
There wasn't any traffic, so I turned off the engine and got out to shoo the frog out of the road. When I nudged it sideways with my foot, though (which usually prompts them to start hopping away, unless they're so freaked out by the whole experience of being stuck in the road that they just freeze), it jumped almost vertically, probably about three feet in the air, and landed a few feet away with a really painful-sounding thump. I tried nudging it again, and this time it jumped high enough to land on my arm for a second before jumping off again.
At this point, I was fairly worried, since I'd never seen a healthy tree frog make that kind of almost-vertical jump. The frog was still next to my feet, so I tried to carefully pick it up to check for injuries. (The only other time I'd seen a frog jumping so erratically was when I found another Cuban Tree Frog with a severe eye injury last year, also in a nearby road, so I thought this frog might have vision or balance problems.)
The frog let me pick it up and sat very calmly in my open hands as I walked in front of my car's headlights for a better view. As far as I could tell, it looked perfectly healthy; it was a medium-size (adorable) Cuban Tree Frog, and it continued to sit on my palm as I held it up to my face and squinted at it. (I know that many wild frogs become much calmer after sitting on a person's hand for a few seconds, but this was an incredibly calm frog.) It wouldn't actually leave my hand when I walked over to the side of the road and tried to put it next to a tree, so I walked a few feet sideways and had to push the frog off my palm to convince it to jump onto the grass.
The clinging-to-my-hand part wasn't all that unusual, especially for a tree frog; I've had to rescue other frogs from roads/other dangerous places before, and many of them seem to decide that I'm essentially a walking tree, once I've picked them up and am no longer a scary giant mammal. The clumsy nearly-vertical jumps seemed strange, though. Has anyone seen that before...? I'm hoping that I didn't just abandon a frog with some significant medical problem on the side of the road, although I know that Cuban Tree Frogs are both invasive and common here (Tampa). They're adorable, though.

[Mentat]

Think it was signaling..."look how high I can jump." Maybe it wanted to be adopted. Animals do strange things. When a child (1950's ) we sometimes visited Dad's family in the mountains. Could not get over the dumb chickens that would panic, run across and under a car in the road, and get squished . They were perfectly safe among the banana plants or orange trees ; but could not see that.

[Kathryn Dorn]

Poor chickens! (That's about the way that frogs act here...they sit in the road and smile at cars and then get flattened.) My own dad's theory is that the frog was trying to adopt me ("it's a giant creature with opposable thumbs that can bring me food and water!").

[UncleChester]

I ran across a large Northern Green Frog, Rana clamitans, that kept jumping vertically in front of my car and landing with an uncoordinated splat. It kept it's head held high and cocked backwards so I figured spine damage or maybe something neurological. If it was an injury, it looked old since I couldn't find any recent signs of trauma so I shuffled it off the road and into the nearby swamp. It seemed to swim all right. I didn't feel at all bad leaving it behind, and neither should you- nature will do her thing if they were too severely injured to carry on normally.

About the habit some treefrogs have of clinging to you when picked up, I always figured this was the Millenium Falcon style of escape. The scary thing trying to eat you (such as a Star Destroyer) can't find you if you're stuck to it, so stay stuck to it. When you get a chance, float away with the rest of the trash and make your escape.

[Heatheranne]

They sure do some strange things sometimes. Perhaps part of the startle response. Jump!!! Who cares where you land, lol! Their instinct is just to "jump".

Cubans are adorable .

Nice of you to scoot him safely across the road .