When I moved to Florida,
There was no one to caution
That I’d find plagues
Of Biblical proportion….
It wasn’t an eclipse of the sun. Water didn’t turn to blood. I don’t have boils. It is frogs.
The other day, I opened the garage door. Max came out to open the garage screening so I could go to my water aerobics class. He took one look at what lurked outside on the driveway and, without moving the screens, he fled to retrieve a broom.
Frogs. Hundreds and hundreds of them.
Yes, there were literally hundreds of baby frogs lethargically hopping around outside our garage door. They were each about the size of a watch battery and the color of raisins. I’ve never seen a raisin-colored watch battery move before, though. These critters were definitely moving, although pretty laconically. I guess baby frogs don’t really have a sense of urgency.
I dealt with the lizards. I dealt with the snakes. I guess I can deal with the frogs. But what’s up with them, anyway?
I hopped (with considerably more energy than the baby frogs, I might add) onto the internet to google “invasion of baby frogs.” As an aside, doesn’t “google” just sound like something relating to frogs? At any rate, I learned that it is actually quite common to encounter zillions of baby frogs hanging out around your property in central Florida. Apparently, mother frogs lay sufficient eggs to result in up to a thousand baby frogs at a time. Then, the moms just hop off to greener pastures. Our driveway was the froggy equivalent of a doorstep on which to leave a baby…. excuse me…. vast quantities of babies. There are no baby froglet Mommy and Me classes. Apparently, there is no nurturing or rearing of any kind. According to the Internet, few of the thousand or so baby frogs survive beyond their first week. Go figure. I’m sorry to say that the baby frogs born in our driveway amphibian maternity ward probably have a shorter life expectancy than most.
I didn’t really have anything against them per se. They didn’t annoy Max as much as the lizards did. They didn’t creep me out the way the snakes did. They were actually kind of cute little buggers. It was just the sheer number of them that was kind of disturbing. There were so dang many of them; it was almost like there was an entire layer of frogginess on top of our driveway. I’d say there were more frogs in my front yard than there are people in my entire community during the summer. We were definitely outnumbered. It was kind of alarming. We sprayed some stuff across the entry to the driveway and swept away as many of them as we could. I’m sure I probably ran a few of them over as I backed my car onto the street.
As we looked around the perimeter of the house, we saw that we were kind of surrounded. Everywhere we looked, more baby frogs. We kept spraying and sweeping so that the baby frogs stayed “around the house” as opposed to “inside the house.” This operation continued every time we wanted to go in or out any door to our house for the next several days. Knowing it was a self-limiting condition made it easier. Sure enough, after about four days, we no longer had layers of visible frogs surrounding the house.
It has been a couple of weeks now since the frog plague. We still see the odd toddler frog around the yard. They aren’t bothering me, so I don’t bother them. After all, if we have to have a plague of Egypt descend upon us in central Florida, frogs aren’t the worst of the bunch.
Of course, I still have a few niggling doubts. How do we know that the frogs are the only plague in the offing? What bothers me most is that both Max and I are first borns…
Of all the situations I’ve encountered since moving, I think the frog invasion is the oddest! What about you? What is the weirdest thing that you’ve experienced in moving to a new place? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com. Have a great day and hop to it!
Terri 🙂