Frogs and Toads and Newts, Oh My!

As my last post would seem to indicate, I usually have pretty keen eyes (and ears) for small furry (or scaly) critters scampering (slithering) around in my proximity. Hey, I once spotted a lizard four lanes over on a wall along the freeway while driving 65 mph. That counts for something, right?

Wrong. My first foray into frog-catching last Tuesday was an unholy disaster. It was for my Reptiles and Amphibians class, and as you can well imagine, I was so jazzed to be going on a field trip (when was the last time that happened?)--and a herp-hunting one at that--that I failed to acknowledge the possibility that I might SUCK, and that the other kids would be showing off all their SKILLS and KNOWLEDGE. However unforeseen, this was indeed the case.

After the first 20-minute forest search, I returned to the meeting place with an empty plastic bag, not having seen, much less caught, a single frog. If I thought that this was a common predicament, I was quickly corrected as one after another classmate arrived with squirming plastic bags. It was like being the only Jewish kid at a Christmas party, and while everyone else was unwrapping their slimy, hopping presents, I was left to look on jealously with nothing at all to celebrate.

Later, at a pond, knee-deep in mud with tall reeds catching at my shirt and pond-scummy sulfrous water splashed all over my jeans, I managed to get my hands on more than a few small frogs. So I guess the whole trip wasn't entirely a wash, even if I did nearly sink into the muck a number of times. It looked something like this: