Frog Whisperer

Group text between my mom and dad, my sister, and me:

Me: I rescued 7 frogs from the basement window wells yesterday

Rachel: 7 frogs = my actual nightmare

Mom: Oh Lord, that would be a major heart attack for me!!

Me: 😂😂😂  I was tender with them. They were scared and hungry

Mom: Makes me shiver thinking about it

Me: I replaced the basement window well covers and I could't bear to leave them there to die

Dad: Love the 🐸. Keep them alive till we get there. Mom will probably want to pet them! 

Mom: You know I will...😳😳😳

Rachel: I just googled “how fast do frogs reproduce” and just FYI, the female can lay as many as 20,000 eggs. #plague

Mom: OH.MY.WORD.

Me: They have predators. Not all 20,000 survive

Mom: Get rid of them before we come…I think you have plenty of time. Eradicate them.

Me: Just to clarify, I RESCUED 7 of them. I’m saving them, not killing them

Mom: I knew you said you rescued…just hide them. Where did you put them?

Me: In the flower bed and the woods

Mom: 😂good. Maybe they will find plenty to eat out there

Me: They must have been dehydrated. They looked skinny, poor things. I talked to them so they wouldn’t be scared.

Mom: That’s funny.  They don’t understand English…you should have croaked to them.

Me: They understood me. Most of them got right onto my shovel

Mom: 😂😂

Rachel: Frog whisperer

Now, listen. “Basement window well” is not in the Southern vocabulary. We don’t have window wells because we don’t have basements. At least we didn’t in Louisiana. If you dig down deep enough in South Louisiana, you hit water, so we tend to keep our digging shallow. 

Here in the Midwest, however, no home is complete without a basement. Finished or un-, all Midwestern homes have one. So, alas, I find myself measuring and replacing the window well covers. Which is how I came across my bumper crop of frogs. Clearly there is a little independent ecosystem down there, for them to proliferate so. Once I discovered them, I could not, in good conscience, cover the window well and leave them to perish. What could I do but retrieve my trusty shovel and rake from the basement and have a go?

Full disclosure: A couple of weeks ago, I spotted a big-daddy bull frog in the window well under the lilacs. As luck would have it, Michael and Ashley were in town, and Michael handled Big Daddy’s rescue. We all cooed over him, plopped him in a bowl of water, and found some bugs for him to eat. He ignored us all and jumped off into the woods (the frog did, not Michael). However, I knew there was life down there in the window well, so dragging out the shop vac was not an option. If Big Daddy had survived down there, there was no telling what else might be lurking next to the soccer ball. (Basement window wells are a magnet for soccer balls.)

So, trusty shovel it was. I murmured sweet nothings to the poor skinny fellas as I coaxed them onto the shovel. I don’t know why. I wanted to comfort them because they looked pale and hungry and scared. I know. They are frogs, and frogs are (a) ugly, and (b) creepy. I wasn’t afraid or disgusted, though. I just had a mission. If they had been snakes? Well……

To their credit, 5 out of 7 frogs got right on the shovel and allow me to lift and dump them. Two of them were skittish, but I finally got them nudged on and lifted out. All in a day’s work around here. Frog whisperer? Maybe that’s my legacy. Put it on my tombstone, I say; there are worse things to be. 

By the way, I measured those darn window wells twice - TWICE - before I ordered. And guess what? They don’t actually fit properly. #midwestproblems