The Big Bad Frog

Yesterday I said the Pacific Tree frog was endangered. It is protected under state regulations. People are not allowed to kill them, capture and breed them or release them back into the wild without permission from the California Fish and Game department. In our case we rescued them from certain  death and will see about their proper release when they're older. 

As I said yesterday raising the frogs has been fun.  I have a funny stories.  For three days we kept hearing croaking in the backyard. So I decided I was done hearing croaking without seeing the actual croaker! My parents said, "You'll never catch one". I decided to prove them wrong. So I took a brownie pan and went on the Hunt! I walked around the pool and looked closely and saw a frog sitting on a water gun. Then I decide to grab the handle of the water gun and plop the frog into the brownie pan. I grabbed a bag and covered it. I ran into the house screaming, "I got one!! ". Then I came into the living room and set the pan down. My father and I were talking about how we would get this frog out of the pan. Suddenly my father say, "Uhh!!!  Alyssa the frog is not in the pan. It's sitting next to you on the floor starring at me!"  I screamed very loudly because I was so scared of this little fat frog. The frog jumped across the living room and my father grabbed the frog. She instantly played dead. I thought she was the cutest animal I've ever seen!! Then I ran into the laundry room and grabbed an old small carnival fish tank. I ran back outside and got grass and put her inside.  I named her Bonita because I had been watching the show Orangutan Island the week before and loved one of the orangutan names. We named her Bonnie for short.   

Below are pictures of Bonnie on the first night in the Merenkov house.

Playing dead 

Bonnie, terrified in my Mom's hands.

Bonnie-just hanging out!

Backyard friends

Three months ago, we discovered that we had frogs in our 25,000 gallon swimming pool. I found the first ones and we took them to our local reptile store. The owner of the store told us that we had Pacific Tree frogs. They are an endangered species. We decided to raise them and then later let some of them go in protected ponds. 

It has been quite an adventure with feeding them. They eat crickets. They will even eat something as big as themselves. They will make their bodies bigger to make room for the cricket. They eat crickets live. It's quite a trip to watch them wrestle the cricket into their mouth. Every month it is $72 to feed 50-70 frogs. It's very exciting to watch them grow. The largest ones seem very tame. Bonnie ,Cha-cha, and Snickers are the largest ones and will even let me hold them and feed them. They close their eyes when they swallow. 

      Here is a picture of one of the cages and them hanging out together!