frog hunt

We actually got a little bit of rainfall on Thursday evening (after a long stretch with no rain), so the boys (especially Zoo Boy) were anxious to go check on the frogs right away. So as soon as we got home from dance class we donned our rain jackets and walked up the road to the vernal pool.

Much to their disappointment, the rain had already pretty much let up (it was just drizzling) and there hadn't been enough to puddle up in the pool. So there wasn't a frog to be seen anywhere, despite my having to swerve to avoid them when driving past the lake just half an hour earlier. We were, however, serenaded by legions of happy tree frogs, far too high up in the trees for us to see with our flashlights.

We decided to walk down to a swampy place below our house to see if there was anything hopping about there. We were just a bit too late, there were a couple of flat frogs on the road (sure hope I wasn't the cause of either of those!), but nothing moving. We decided to climb in the car and drive further afield in search of frogs, but by then the rain had quit completely, and after checking out several likely locations, we gave up and called it a night with only a few toads to our name, including this little guy who actually climbed up onto The Map Man's foot (though I missed the photo of that):














We checked the pool again the next morning on our walk. Sure enough, there wasn't any water in it, just a bit of mud. Which prompted more discussion about the frogs and why vernal pools don't have water in them all year round.

The boys are hoping for a bigger rainfall the next time to really get some frogs out and moving in our neighborhood. But they can't be hoping for rain as much as we adults are. So far our well has been fine, but we're really pushing our luck at this point, we've only had an inch or so of rain over the past two months.