IN Press: Once again, it's a froggy summer

[Herp News]

COURIER PRESS (Evansville, Indiana) 09 August 09 Once again, it's a froggy summer (Steve Ford)
It's a good thing successful wildlife projects don't have to be by design.
Most of my best work to benefit wildlife, especially around my own house, has sprung from a posture of benign neglect.
I've allowed blackberry thickets to rise from the middle of my side yard. Tree trimmings are left in piles of "habitat." And this year I've allowed a future generation of tree frogs to flourish.
Project Tree Frogs happened because, as you know, it's been a particularly wet summer.
I had no plans to harbor a burgeoning tree frog nursery a few weeks ago when I happened to notice the little fellas with the suction cup feet were especially noisy — with mating calls — for a week.
Throw in a steady diet of soaking rain, a couple of persistent mud puddles in my weed-choked gravel turnaround and, presto, I had two pools of tadpoles.
While I suspect most people would have missed them because they started quite small (I first thought they were mosquito larvae and about to die), I looked closer because I've been down this road before.
But I couldn't remember the details on our other tree frog project so I called my daughter, Lacey, and her 24-year-old memory.
"Do you remember the year we had all the tree frogs, Lacey?" I asked her.
"Of course," she said.
"Where did they all come from?" I continued.
"That was the year you left that inflatable plastic boat we used to fill up like a pool next to the house," she said. "It filled up with rainwater, you forgot about it and a few weeks later we had tadpoles and then you had to let them grow because I love frogs."
The frogs would attach themselves to the stonework, windows, doors, the grill and anything else in the yard. One stayed in the house for a while; they're very little trouble and they do eat bugs.
Now it looks like we're in for another batch, although they're still several weeks away. This time has been a little more work, though. The puddles in the driveway have begun to dry up and I've kept them going for a few days with the garden hose. There also is predation.
The first critter I saw get after them was a small Eastern box turtle. He would chase them around with his head under water and stayed in there so long he started getting green moss on his shell.
I took him out Wednesday, but he was back in there the next day and then I saw him again Friday, Only this time he wasn't moving. Apparently, imitating a snapping turtle wasn't a healthy lifestyle for a land dweller.
Friday presented a more serious predation threat when I noticed raccoon tracks in the mud. I'd have to move the future frogs. Enter Project Tadpole Transplant 2009.
Because I no longer have an inflatable boat or a plastic pool, I went with a large plastic work cart that is water tight and portable. That should confuse the raccoons and allow me to move the cart up near the front window when the tadpoles start to complete their metamorphosis into frogs.
So you can call me the Frog Whisperer.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/200...froggy-summer/