Our Disappearing Frog.

After the blog on turtles and fish surviving the winter my mind just would not stop and I thought of what happens to frogs. We have a spring on our property that runs all year long and where it runs down and goes into a ditch by the road we used to have a frog. When I would walk along the road I would hear its ribbit several times and then splash it would hide in the water. It had been in that small puddle of water for years or its offspring and following the wildfire it has not been seen.

I often wondered how it survived the winter to come forth each year so my previous blog got my mind to working again (not exactly what I wanted), so I looked up how frogs survive the winter. Our winter can last for up to 6 months and the pond freezes over but a trickle still runs underneath the ice. I have previously posted photos of where the ice freezes coming out of the 18" culvert as it forms a pretty sculpture of columns of ice.

I had wrongly assumed that frogs buried themselves in the muck and mud to survive. They actually stay in the fresh water flow because their skin is permeable and they can absorb the oxygen they need through their skin. They hibernate and their system slows down enabling them to survive the winter. So turtles breathe through their butts and frogs breathe through their skin and get the required oxygen they need for survival.

Since the wildfire I have missed seeing our frog and while they can adapt to the cold and freezing winter they can't survive wildfires. I miss seeing our frog but it was likely it was boiled alive in his small pool of water when the temperatures reached 4,200 degrees. RIP mister frog. Maybe now my mind will settle down and focus on more important things like snow removal.