Bad time to get out of the pool!

  The American Green Tree Frog tadpoles have been doing their morphing into froglets this whole week.  Between those and the baby toads, the yard is hopping with wee froglets!  It is impossible to take a single step without having a few underfoot.  Fortunately, they seem to be able to flatten themselves enough that a simple footstep does not harm them.  The shoe has to be twisted into the dirt before they have problems.  My soft, leather moccasins seem to do no damage but, just to be on the safe side, I step lightly. The little froglets climb up on anything handy during this stage of their life.  My waterlilies and water hyacinths seem to be a fine perching point for the change to occur.  At any given time, hundreds of little froggies can be observed in the water plants if you know where to look. The green tree frogs' color gives them the perfect camouflage while on the leaves.  If one did not know that the frogs were climbing onto the plants, they might be passed unseen..at least by humans.

  I watched as the little froglets left the safety of the Frog Pond to climb upon the lily pads.  Mostly, this even went smoothly.  The froglets were able to rest and finish their change from tadpole to full frog in the warm sunshine.  One, however, met with danger right at the beginning!  Poor little froglet chose the wrong water hyacinth as its perch.  It climbed up the first stalk to be met face to face by a wolf spider!  Granted this was a smallish spider but it still would have made a meal of such a tiny frog! The froggy spied the spider and immediately slipped back into the water.  Froggy then chose a different hyacinth to use as his exit spot. Meanwhile, the spider sat quite still as it awaited another meal to make its way onto the hyacinth.  Froggy was safe for the time being.  Once he climbed onto the leaf, he sat still to warm in the sun before making the full exit from the pond.  This path led him up the stalk of a Spiderwort plant onto the wisteria vine.  From there he made his way to the top of the arbor to hide beneath the vines until nightfall.  

  Out of the thousands of baby frogs and toads that exit the Frog Pond, a good many will fall prey to such things as this spider.  Predators are many when you are so tiny but tiny or not, the frogs and toads are predators themselves.  They rid the gardens of myriads of bugs!  Love my froggies!