Just one shot!

It nailed it!

How many crickets does it eat a day?
I don't know, I guess as many as it wants, but I feed it two to three a day. I don't want it to outgrow my aquarium. It may grow up like the one Francois was holding... see the photo of "New frogs" below.

How much is it for a cricket?
Small ones are 10 cents each, big ones are 11 cents each. That one extra cent will make it reeeeeeaaaally fat!

Hmmm, YUMMY!

See my frog in action!

Its natural instinct to hunt is fascinating.

Since it tracks motion for food, I don't have choice but feeding it with live insects, unfortunately. So environmentalists, don't sue me for violating animal or insect rights, thanks.

Anti-freeze frog?

I told a couple of co-workers about my adoption of a northern leopard frog and one of them came to this conclusion, "... take it while you can, it may extinct soon." I was a little puzzled by his comment. "Because I took it out from its natural habitat?" I asked. "No! It's mostly because a lot of fishermen round up these leopard frogs as baits for fishing. They hook it on their backs," he said. Ouch!

Then he pointed me to a full page infographics we ran on how creatures survive the harsh winter in Minnesota. The bottom segment of it was about this native frog's adaptation to frigid temperature, which I found it quite incredible, and very amusing at the same time. Take a look at the graphics yourself.

However, I'm still convinced that my action was legitimate. We are talking about a frog that will be frozen in an ice-cube... after all, I enjoy its company in my aquarium. At least through this winter if you will.

Graphics: Ray Grumney / Star Tribune

My intervention

It was mid-November and the night time temperature was below freezing for many days. The surface water in my little pond was already frozen, about one inch thick. The wood was half-submerged in between ice and water. I couldn't lift it out of the pond, it got stuck.

"The frog wouldn't make it, seriously!" I told myself.

The temperature in the next few days got back to mid-30s, and the ice on the pond surface thawed. Out of curiosity, I wanted to lift up the wood and see. But before I did that, I grabbed an insect net, just in case if the frog was still there.

I turned the wood around... "Wow!" The frog was in the hole.

I wasn't in a hurry to net it, the reason? It looked like it had begun its hibernation... its limps were stretching a little, but not jumping away... or maybe it wanted to but couldn't. "Sorry, I wake you up, but I don't want to see your frozen dead body next Spring."

After shaking it off the wood into the net, I settled it in the breezeway for a while before taking it inside in an empty aquarium with only gravel and a little water in it.

Voila, it came back to life!

Chilling thoughts

The air is quite crispy in the fall here in Minnesota. Stepping outside the house could feel the chill in the bone, in the morning or at night. I was wondering if the frog was still in the pond because it's late October.

As I found out from the website I posted below, the northern leopard frog will find their way back to the pond in the fall and spend the winter hibernating under the water, but not in the mud totally like turtles do, otherwise, they would suffocate to death.

And when Spring comes, they will start mating and laying eggs. Now back to the question. Will they find a spot in the pond that is as deep as possible? Or they don't really care... Regardless, the pond water will still be frigid cold.

Out of curiosity, I slipped my hand in my little pond... gosh! I couldn't wait to take it out of the water. Ten seconds was the longest I could bear to keep it in.

I was thinking, "what if... the frog is still in the water? Or under the floating wood?" Can it survive the winter in my little pond? The whole thing will turn into a big chunk of ice. I sneezed a little as I thought about that. I was mumbling to myself, "...can't let that happen, it won't make it!"

Illustration: Me

New frogs

Two new frogs came over to my pond this summer... one green, one brown. The green one seems to enjoy the pond more and stayed there the whole summer, while the brown one showed up in the flower bed, quite close to the pond, for a few days and nowhere to be seen again. I have to say, the brown one looks quite interesting. I showed my kids the photos and they insisted that it's a toad. But I said this brown one has the same pattern as the green one, and the overall look of it is more a frog than a toad. And I looked up to some websites and confirmed that this northern leopard frog, Rana Pipiens, has two kinds, the green one and the brown one.

Now I don't know if the frogs my kids were holding during vacation in a ski resort in canada a year ago the same speices as this one, but they certainly look quite similar, though I have to say Francois's frog was the biggest I've ever seen and caught in my life. We ended up letting the big one going back into the pond behind us. The small one? Melissa took it back home and trying to raise it, but this little one was just too smart! It jumped out of the container one night and disappeared...

Lessons learn: if a frog can jump 5 ft. away with one leap, it can jump over obstacle that is one foot high... and don't underestimate anybody's potentials.

How pretty!

First came a frog, and now a dragonfly...

I was taking pictures of flowers in my backyard and saw the dragonfly on a piece of dead wood. I moved my hand next to it slowly to get it landed on my finger... I'm surprised that it didn't fly away...

Fast rewind

All these photos were taken in the summer of 2007.

Without a big and gorgeous landscaped property like those featured in water gardening magazines, let alone the expenses and headaches to maintain a large pond, I have decided to drop the idea of this build-it-from-the-ground-up backbreaking project. No way, I did a small one once in my first house in Orange County, California, almost a decade ago. Hey, I was still young and ambitious. Never would I do it again however. Why? I’m kinda lazy.

But I still like the solitude of a pond. So a patio pond is my solution. All it costs me was twenty-five bucks when I accidentally saw it on sale while shopping for winterizing materials last fall. It came with an underwater pump that would have cost at least $40 in a pet shop.

Other accessories are mostly recycled from frozen dinner trays and gardening containers. Floating dead wood, branches, and moss for decorations are free to pick anywhere in a wooded area. The aquatic plants... ahhhhh, ahem, I have to admit I picked a handful of small ones along a creek... and they outgrew my pond.

After that, just add water and fish in, and there you go, it's almost like an instant noodle soup...

It's so skinny!

Well, this frog is just a little skinny! Judging from its pattern, it's probably a brown Northern Leopard frog, which is a native Rana Pipiens in the northern part of the U.S., here in Minnesota.

Actually, this frog came to my pond before the green one which I called it "Shriek". As you can see, "Shriek" has the camouflage in the algae filled water; and the brown one can be totally hidden against the dead wood. Unfortunately, the brown one disappeared after staying in the pond for a couple of weeks... don't know if it got caught by raccoons or other animals or simply moving on. Hope it's the latter.

One may ask if both frogs are Northern Leopard frogs, does that mean one is male and the other is female? Not necessarily. It's just this species has two different color. See these two links for more information:
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/snapshots/frogs_toads/northernleopardfrog.html
http://www.nativeecosystems.org/species/northern-leopard-frog/index_html/

I live about a quarter mile away from two mid-size ponds, these frogs were probably wandering around the neighborhood and found a small pond to escape the heat wave. As the article suggests in the website, they like to hang around in grasslands and meadows.

As I said early, they like to stay in the pond during the day, but disappear in the evening and at night. Somehow, they came back the next day.

Are they mating?

When I step out to my backyard, I tend to open the breezeway door slowly to avoid scaring the frog jumping away.

After I have observed this frog for some time, I learned that frogs in general don't like sudden movement of big objects. I guess it's their "flight instincts" when they detect such a movement as danger. However, if I move slowly close to just one foot away from it, it still doesn't care. That's how I took the snap shot of it in such a close distance.

One day, things got a little interesting! I saw another one in brownish color sitting side by side with the green one on the edge of the pond. Were they friends? Mating, anybody? The pattern of their bodies is totally identical, but their color is different. what gives?

Why the wire fence on the top?

One word: RACCOON

Not only was the frog staying in the pond, there were some gold fish in there too, that's why I needed to have some kind of protection to prevent raccoons from jumping in...

Unfortunately, fish is just too tempting to raccoons, even the fence cannot stop them from coming to look for sashimi...

One morning, I found the fence dropped down close to the water and the filter was totally messed up... I suspected it was the raccoon(s) that came to look for food last night. Anyway, I got the pond fixed.

When I came home after work at night, I went out to the backyard and caught some fresh air. As I turned around, I saw ten eyes starring at me... OMG, a family of five (two big ones and three small ones) were standing just about 5 ft. away. It was the closest encounter I've ever run into. Fearing these guys may carry rabies and jumped on me, I had a thought to rush into the breezeway, but instead, I grabbed a lawn chair next to me and chased them away. Whew!

Ahhhhh, wildlife on my patio pond

Nobody welcomes intruders, but sometimes, there is an exception.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Prince! Ahem, I mean the “Frog” Prince.

No, it is not an almighty frog that broke into my house. It is just a 5-inch-long frog, from head to toe, which has found my 35-gallon patio preformed pond a perfect summer getaway, like we Homo sapiens seeking the most exotic places on earth for vacations.

Prince obviously does not mind the floating dead wood, it’s probably a chalet in his mind. And for that I owe him my gratitude.

At the very least, it keeps me company in the morning while I'm having my coffee in my backyard. We both have something else in common though – I work at night to make a living and it goes out hunting when it's dark.

(This essay was written a year and a half ago)