Catching Frogs

I have been seeing a lot of animals lately. First I caught salamanders. Then, on Monday after FHE, I decided to go on a later run. As I am approaching the home stretch of my run, I run past a pretty large deer that is dead on the side of the road. A few more steps and I see one of the deer's antlers. Then a little further up there was a dead pheasant with its pretty tail feathers scattered everywhere. Then I look up and I see Sara (the one I tutor with) and her roommate Erica chatting away by the blue roof chapel right there. That is A LOT more than I usually see in my regular run. Maybe I should go later at night more often! Come to find out they were standing there (a little far away from home for a night chat) because Sara had hit the deer. Didn't work out so much for her car, but at least she is okay. I told her that she should have a funeral for the deer.

Tonight when I got home, I saw two Matt's from the Matt apartment talking to my neighbor. Matt (that I spent Saturday with catching Salamanders) wanted to show our neighbor our salamanders. Anyway... one of them was looking pretty skinny, so we felt like we needed to catch them some food. I don't want to be the cause of their death! I want to see them change, they can't die yet. So Matt and I head to the park with a net  and go to try and catch bugs. Because it was dark, we didn't see any bugs. However, there were a lot of little small fish in the pond, so we caught some to feed to the salamanders.

While standing around the pond catching fish... we kept hearing this weird noise. I can't even say that the noise even sounded like an animal, but we were surrounded by bats and that was about it... so we couldn't figure out what was making that noise. Then we figured out it was frogs croaking! So then we wanted to catch frogs! They are so fun, why not? Plus, I was not really ready to leave the park yet... I mean it was a beautiful night. There was a breeze, the moon was reflecting off of the pond water.... it was just nice to be out and at the park. I love summer nights! First we caught a smaller frog and played with him for a while. He then escaped back to the pond. Then we realized there was a HUGE bull frog. We wanted to catch it, but he was too far out in the water. I had just taken a shower, so I was not about to set foot in that pond, especially after seeing the dead goldfish floating. Turns out Matt wanted to catch it pretty bad. He got in the pond (really quiet so not to scare the frog off) with his shoes and long pants and got in waste deep and caught the frog. It was awesome! He brought it out and then it started playing dead. It was pretty funny. We played with it for a while and showed it to a few people and then it went back to the pond. We decided though that we would like to go back and catch it again and see if there are anymore big ones in there. So funny that we go out there "real quick" to catch bugs and then ended up staying a long time frog catching. Here are some pictures I took.

Here is the baby frog we found.

Here is Matt getting into the nasty pond, sneaking up on the huge frog. Caught it first try!

Here is the frog playing dead, and Matt with his victory catch! I think he thought it was worth turning into the swamp thing to catch him.

It defiantly brought entertainment to me tonight! I have been living next to this park with this pond for YEARS and I had no idea we had awesome frogs so close by. I feel like I have been missing out. It's okay though, I think Matt and I will be back for more this summer.