The Frog Hotel Caper

As many of you know, I’m a bit of a gardening nut – or maybe just a nutty gardener – but suffice to say that I like my nature pretty darn well. I have managed to find every vacant plot of dirt on Roomie’s property and stick something in there to grow and in fact, things do grow, magically.

Consequently, much of my garden or a large section of my many little gardens, is very near my bedroom window. Well, warm weather and happy, thriving plants attract more than butterflies and bees. They also attract crickets. Loud crickets. Very loud crickets. In fact, horny crickets, if I’m to believe what Roomie says. While the hot crickets are screeching out there in order to find the hot cricket chicks, I’m trying to sleep. Closing the window is not an option, unless I want to suffocate, so I began looking for solutions….

Cups of beer nestled into the garden so the hot cricket dudes will be lured over to the bar section of the garden to have a cold one, whilst they wait on the ladies to appear, and incidentally drown in their beer literally, while waiting, was my first attempt. Nope, that didn’t work – I assume they were christian crickets, perhaps Quakers? Cricket hotels, where they check in but they don’t check out – apparently, they couldn’t find any cricket chicks who were willing. Watering the garden at night – only good for producing mold in the squash leaves. Making loud noises – doesn’t scare crickets but does make the neighbor dogs a little cranky. Drugs for sleeping seemed my only option…

Then someone casually mentioned that frogs eat crickets. “What’s that?” I asked, perking up almost instantly. “Really?” To say I was delighted at this ever so simple solution doesn’t begin to describe my joy. The next day I would go to the pet store, buy a few frogs, explaining to them that I have a never-ending, all you can eat, smorgasborg in my garden and there was no limit to what my little warty friends could have. I thought this pitch was sure to not only cause them never want to leave, but also that they would text all their other froggy friends and I would get a good night’s sleep as well. A real win-win. Now, I can just hear some of you saying that frogs make noise too – well, that’s true, but I like the sound of frogs, maybe it’s the non-screeching – but I digress…

So, the next day, off I go to the pet store – only to discover that no, they don’t actually have frogs in the store and they are a special order item and then the pet store lady showed me a big poster of all the many frogs one can buy and have as a pet. I had a feeling she’d freak out if I told her I was looking for a few mascotts for my garden, so I politely left, hoping I’d find another store who would just have frogs in stock and sell them to me.

While I was at it, I thought it would be good to g**gle what kind of frogs hang out in gardens, lest I purchase the wrong. The info was even more overwhelming – in addition to the fact that there are several religious sects which worship frogs, there are breeders with odd names and scary website and so that approach began to look hopeless and expensive. So, I did another search on how to tempt frogs into your garden. It was so simple I couldn’t believe it.

You make a little resort for them. I did just that. Nothing fancy, mind you, an old bowl, some water and rocks and floating plants and viola – a froggy pool. Since they need shade I got my potted bamboo plant and took it out there and positioned it so it would shade the area for them. And then…well, I crossed my fingers.

So, Friday…I finally managed to drag my butt out my blogging chair and went out to the garden to do some much needed weeding, tying, staking and fertilizing. After a couple of hours, things looked much better and I got the hose to water the thirsty devils that are growing like Triffods gone wild. As I sprayed the water over the cherry tomato section I saw something move. A little brown/yellow/green something, which I thought was a moth or butterfly that had lit on a leaf and flew off when the water got too close. But it moved again and I knew it wasn’t a moth, so I bent in closer to take a look. It was a teeny, tiny, little froggy. My heart skipped a beat. Had word about the froggy hotel spread already? I couldn’t believe my luck.

I chased him back and forth for a minute or so and finally caught the little fellow. He looked deeply into my eyes and I’m pretty sure, we had a moment. Then ever so gently I took him over to the hotel and put him in the pool. He swam a few strokes and then hopped onto a rock, then out of the pool and then he sunned himself for a sec before he hopped over to the big tomato plant and went for a climb.

Hopefully, he’s emailing all of his friends and they’ll have a summer of fun in the froggy hotel and I’ll get a good sleep through the summer. Crickets, beware!! Muwahahahahahahahahaah 😉

Update: Today, my little Freddy frog bounded out of the squash plants, let me chase and catch  him and take him to the pool again. What was really amazing was that he let me take some pictures of him too! He even waited while I ran in the house to get the camera. So, if you want to see pictures of Freddy and the Froggy Hotel & Spa, go to my gardening page. Woo Hoo, we’re having fun now. 😉