part three — The Frog is found…

In my last post, I mentioned that I had hospitalized a frog (probably a Cuban Tree Frog, which is an invasive species,) in a container in my kitchen over night to help him recuperate after an exciting day.  See previous 2 posts.  And I explained how I checked on him that night before I went to bed (and may not have put the lid on his container correctly.)  And how the next morning, Frog was gone.

I did not look for the Frog who I suspected was hopping about in a house occupied by 3 humans and 2 cats… because, well because.

… Every so often when I am house cleaning I will come across some dried up critter, usually always a lizard, that has wandered into my house and made its way behind a piece of furniture in the bedroom.  This is Florida and the veil between the two worlds, or “inside” and “outside” are kind of thin.  Houses are not impervious…so I figured that I would find Frog a few weeks or months from now, in a closet or behind a bookcase, all dessicated…

and I admit I went about my business that morning.  Eventually I wandered through the kitchen and happened to look down (perhaps to not step on a cat tail,) and saw the Frog, hanging onto the handle of a jug of Arizona Tea.  We keep 3 or 4 jugs stacked next to the Refrigerator.

I swooped down, picked him up, he hung onto my thumb but also started trying to Escape! and I made a beeline to the Orchid Tree:  out the sliding glass door, out the porch door and out to the Tree.  As soon as we got to where there was AIR, the Frog was so joyful/excited/anxious…

I placed him on the sunny side of the tree because there was at least a 10 degree difference between Indoors and Outdoors temperatures, and the Frog bolted off the Tree and straight out into the Sunlight!

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part two- the frog escapes

Maybe you all saw this coming, but I sure didn’t!

To catch you up on our story, I found a tree frog after he’d been SCREECHING at the top of his lungs and after he fell about 15 feet out of a tree in my back yard.  He was scraped up a bit but seemed to be alive and I put him in a plastic container (the kind they put soup in at a Chinese carry-out restaurant)  with air holes in the lid so he could recuperate overnight indoors.  (The temperature dropped below 50 last night and I wasn’t sure the Frog could get somewhere to be safe and comfortable in his condition.)  I parked the container on its side on a table in the kitchen.  It had a wet paper towel in one end and a piece of cat food in the other end.  Frog was pointed nose-in to begin with.

Before I went to bed, I checked on Frog.  He had turned around so he was facing nose-out and had ‘shat,’ which I thought was a good sign.

This morning I got up early and went to check on Frog again.  The container was empty.  My husband woke up before me and was already sitting in the living room watching TV so I asked him if he had released the Frog.  He said he hadn’t.

So I have an escaped Frog somewhere in my house with two cats.

My husband points out this is probably a Cuban Tree Frog and they are an invasive species.

What would you have done?

rescuing a frog

This may be a two-part story; I don’t know yet.

I was in the kitchen working on something behind the refrigerator when I heard a “SCREECH” coming from the back yard.  A moment later, I heard it again:  SCREECH!   Thinking that it was a baby bird in distress,  noted the location of my two cats as we all went out to the porch and then to the back yard.  I strode over to the Orchid tree and stood under it and waited.  SCREECH!  Ok, I was in the right area.  I looked up, scanning the leaves and twigs to see if I saw any thing — no birds, no mice — then suddenly, it SCREECH-ed again and then something fell out of the tree and hit the ground.

My one cat sat near where I was standing, but he seemed to know to leave the critter alone.  I stepped closer and saw that it was a tree frog.  I picked up a little twig and tapped the frog on the butt, to see if he would hop.  He didn’t.

I scooped him up with my fingers and he held onto my thumb.  I looked him over closely.  He was breathing.  He seemed to have scraped the skin over the top of his left eye.  Everything else seemed to be ok.

I took him into the house and got a paper towel for him to sit on and went out to the porch and sat down.  I smoothed his scraped skin near his eye back into place with my finger nail.  I sat calmly and figured the warmth of my hand was a good thing.

My daughter has a friend who raises spiders and snakes.  We called her up.  As it happens, she was driving near our house and came over.  She looked at Frog and agreed with me that he was probably shook up and maybe a little shocked.  She said we could put him in a box of some kind with air holes and a wet paper towel and let him rest for a while.

Maybe he’d eat some cat food…

Photo later.