Monday, July 31, 2017

Toad in the Hole

This is a post hole on the patio left over from nearly a year ago. Rather than buying a 50-lb bag of cement to fill a 5" hole we covered it with a potted plant. Today Sally was moving some things around and noticed that the hole had a denizen. He's a bullfrog. I've never seen a square bullfrog. You may have a hard time seeing him to begin with, but you can't see his whole body because some of it is buried in the dirt.
 I've seen a trillion frogs but never one this wide for his length and not even close. He's almost like a different variety. He's Frogga the Hut for sure. I'm dying to take him out and marvel at him but I wouldn't do that, and he's made himself so completely at home that he looks like he's growing out of the ground. It's not quite like an iceberg thing, but there's still a surprising amount of him below the surface. Every time we water the plants a bit of soil falls through and covers him a bit more. I'll keep an eye out.
 I'm not sure at this point if he could get out if he wanted to. I guess maybe he could still hop, but that's a pretty good jump from where he sits. It's a velvet prison. For all I know he may have hopped down in there just to get warm when he was 1/2" long and never left. Once he figured out that unsuspecting bugs would crawl down into his home and right up to his nose, which probably didn't take long, apparently it didn't take much to convince him to stay. He's made himself right at home. He didn't seem to care at all when his flower-pot roof got temporarily removed. He didn't flinch when Sally reached in there to pull out a couple of sweetgum balls. Hopefully he'll be more comfortable.
 He may be the biggest and squarest frog I've ever seen in my life, but he's also got the best gig by far. He doesn't have to move a millimeter to eat. The bugs can't tell him from the rest of the hole until it's too late. By now he must feel absolutely entitled. I'll be checking on him frequently now that I know he's there. I doubt he's going anywhere. He already takes up half the space, and even though you can't really see from this image he fills it up pretty solid. In another year or two he's going to grow to fill the entire hole and he's going to be a gigantic square frog. I wish I could find him some lo-cal bugs or get him a treadmill or something, but at least I can help keep him comfortable and make sure he's able to hibernate correctly. I don't have to worry about feeding him. He's got that under control. I'm honestly not sure I've ever seen a living thing so at one with its surroundings. Now I feel responsible for him and I'll do my best to see that he lives a good long square life. A square frog. Wow. I never.

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