Winter of 2008 seemed particularly long and bothersome to me for some reason, so it’s  no wonder that I’ve gone a little over the edge in my pursuit of spring! After recently reading about Writing Away in Cedar Key‘s newly installed fishpond and feeling slightly jealous because I just know she’s going to be serenaded by frogs sooner or later, I started to fondly remember our home in Tennessee and its two fishponds that Hubby and I installed. In addition to enjoying the goldfish swimming around, every evening around dusk we were treated to a wonderful froggie serenade that, darn it, I miss to this day!

I’m not sure I even understand my attraction to frogs, but my favorite are the ones I remember in Florida after rainstorms–tiny little green things barely an inch long with “hind legs” that could stretch two inches or more as they hopped along the wet country roads and highways. They’d be so thick that, if a truck or car came along, there was no way in the world to avoid killing hundreds but there were hundreds of times that number still left. As the ground dried up they seemed to disappear, and I never did figure out where they spent their time between rainy day visits. Ever since moving to the desert southwest nearly ten years back, and now still living in a semi-desert here in Utah, I haven’t seen or heard many frogs for a very long time. So now that’s finally springtime, I went looking for some! And I found them–where else ?–on YouTube!

The first video features American radio and television journalist Robert Krulwich with a story on the amazing death and rebirth of a small wood frog. You must see the amazing transformation of this little frog from the frozen state they go into in the wintertime, into a revitalized, thawed amphibian ready to mate again after only about thirty minutes have lapsed. It runs 4 minutes 25 seconds and you have a morbid scientific curiosity, this one is for you.

You may want to skip the second video UNLESS you either have kids or grandkids around, OR you’re still very much in touch with your inner child. Watch it with the kiddies and learn a song about five speckled frogs. And before I leave, I HAVE to tell you one more frog activity. Try this next time you have any number of assembled children of various ages, (or adult children) and you’re trying to keep them entertained until curtain time or whatever. The more the better. Everyone says “ribbit” over and over again in his or her normal speaking voice. Oh all right! If you want to ham it up a bit, that’s cool too! But the kids will have a ball and you’ll swear you’re in a swamp teeming with singing frogs. (For more animal stories, be sure to join me here next week for a guest blog by my friend Rocky in Las Vegas!)