A Plague of Frogs

    I built my pond in 1993 to create habitat for wildlife.  Once it began to fill with water, I collected local growing aquatic plants and fish to get it going.  I always had toads around our property, but there were no frogs.  In fact it was difficult to find many frogs in the Robson Valley.  I did find a few which I took down to the pond.  They survived and their population has grown to the point that I can now sometimes see them leap into the water as we walk around the pond, but there aren’t a whole lot.

    Yesterday as I was walking Skye down the road at Horseshoe Lake, I was amazed to see hundreds and hundreds of tiny frogs moving across the road and in the plants along the road.  Obviously, the frogs at Horseshoe Lake had a very good breeding season, but having so many little frogs born, I knew that their mortality in that isolated area would be high.  So I thought I would try to catch some of them, take them home with me, and let them loose at my pond. 

    I didn’t have anything to put them in, but luckily in the trash container near the parking lot, I found a McCafe coffee cup with plastic cap (the nearest McDonald’s is over 135 miles away).  I washed it out in a puddle and then went back out on the road to catch some of the baby frogs.  I caught about 25 in no time at all.  I drove them home and let them out, a few at a time, along the wooded side of my pond.

    I know that some of them will be eaten, (I have a garter snake living down there this year, that will probably catch a few), but hopefully a fair number will survive, grow to breed, and increase the gene pool in the frog population living around my pond.  

    The number of frogs and toads around the world are declining rapidly due to disease, pesticides, and the loss of wetlands and other habitat.  I hope that the ones I now have living in my pond will continue to thrive and spread throughout the neighborhood. 

You can view my photo-realistic paintings:  www.davidmarchant.ca