More Nature

Eep-Frogs Return, Downtrodden Frogs Are Related Breed

I've written about the small, intensely paranoiac eep! frogs at the North Campus; after a dry summer of mostly not seeing them, a half-dozen or so seem to have been washed downstream and ended up in a large puddle mostly inside a culvert; they lurk at the non-covered end, basking in the sun, waiting for bugs and exclaiming eep! while ducking and covering if anything bigger than a bug happens by. The puddle is shrinking, but fear not: they have access to a field-tile drain that surfaces not a quarter-mile away.

...And down where the field-tile surfaces, the dispirited or downtrodden frogs have grown up big, and no longer just sit there, along the bank or noses poking out of the water, thinking at you "I'm a rock, I'm a rock, I'm a rock," just as hard as they can, while hoping you'll go away. Nope; they start with that but if you keep moving, they shout, "Yiipe!" and splash into the deeper water, headed for hiding.

I thought I had written about them before but I can't find it -- they favor patches of algae and end up with a good bright-green coating of it all over their froggy faces. I thought their bodies were brown, but several recent examples had the coating of mud on their lower bodies rubbed off in spots -- and what's under it is spots: they're leopard frogs -- and the skittish little eep frogs are, too.

Which means the place has been colonized by eepin' leopards. Filthy muddy eepin' leopards. Sadly, that's not what Little Orphan Annie said* -- but she would've if she'd'a met these.

They're like the opposite of Kzinti: they scream and they leap -- for cover.
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* It was "leapin' lizards!" an altogether more fearsome prospect, as most frogs lack A) teeth and B) claws, but few lizards do.