Frog Season

As the weather cooled off, we said goodbye to our last catch of the season. And wasn't he/she a beauty. Keane named him "Tiger" and Lu named him "Rascal". How did we catch this thing? Funny story. After my last big enrichment (Sept 3), I was carrying some loads out to my car and this little guy was waiting for me. I knew it was a tender mercy, because our entire night was about tender mercies and everything that happened to me after that night I like to put in the tender mercy category. Anyhow, to the horror of some onlooking sisters, I scooped him up into a laundry basket and carried him to my car, as he peeed the whole way.
Got him home, and put him in a nice deep, very deep, bin. I added some rocks, grass water, and dead crickets that were conveniently located all around my backyard. Yeah, just call me Snow White. Animals love me. Well to our disappointment, we woke up the next morning to find him gone! I don't know how he jumped that high but he did. While we found frog "scat" in our yard for the next couple of days, we never found him.
Then, a couple of weeks later, after rolling in from Sunday dinner, "eagle ears Ty" heard him along side the house. We had a good couple of days and then decided to put him in frog heaven, this little secret pond that is close to our house. So one night, I was trying to be a "good" mom and make my kids go to sleep in their own beds. We read stories, said prayers and tucked them in. Lucy zonked out right away, but Keane usually insists that you lay by him for at least an hour or two or five! And as much as I love to lay by him, it is getting impossible execute my dream of a smooth bedtime routine, and spending a little time with my Ty guy. I tucked him in and said that I would come back and check on him in a few minutes and that he needed to go to sleep. I came out and Ty was already asleep. Oh well. So I started some laundry. A good 20 minutes later, I peeked in to check on Keane and discovered that he was sitting patiently on the end of his bed waiting for me to come check on him. It melted my heart and so I went in and said, "Do you want to go with me to the froggie pond and we'll let Tiger go?" We snuck out. As I pulled up to this pitch dark farm road, we got out of the car and approached the water. As we got close, I heard a flurry of activity in the water. I panicked as visions of the Crocodile Hunter ran through my head and I just knew that this was our punishment for not going to bed on time! Needless to say, we survived and hopefully Rascal/Tiger is living the good life down at the pond.

PS-While playing with the frog one day, I asked the kids if they thought it was a boy or a girl. Lucy flipped him over and examined his underside. Then she said, "I know for sure that it is a girl mommy frog because look at her floppy belly, it looks just like yours mom!" Oh how I love that girl no matter what she did to my abdomen when she was in it, and no matter what she says about it now that she is out of it!