Some of my favorite animals in the central Florida area are frogs. We have 27 different types in our area, and I am lucky to enjoy several of them here on my own little slice of land. My absolute favorites are the green tree frogs. They are so little and cute, and eat nothing but pest insects, so what’s not to love, right? I also always have a healthy population of American bullfrogs that make themselves at home in the water troughs and my pond. I had seen these guys before, when I was in high school and lived with my folks about a hours drive south of where I am now. Their house had a vacant lot next door that was totally wild, and pretty swampy. At night during the summer their deep, booming “chug a rum” calls could be heard all over that swampy lot. If you waded into the water in the swamp, there would be tadpoles everywhere!

When I moved up here into the sandhills, I didn’t expect to see bullfrogs anymore. This area still gets plenty of rain, and there are ponds spattered around all through the state forest land behind us, but except for the ponds, the area usually stays pretty dry. After a hard rain there may be puddles for a short time, but it isn’t usually very long before the excess water is drawn down through the sand, and everything is dry again. I didn’t count on the resilience and adaptablity of the American bullfrog, though. It wasn’t long after I moved here that I put out a good sized water trough for the dogs and the goat that I moved here with me. At that point, my property was still very wild. There was a strip of grass about three feet wide around the house, and everything else was totally overgrown. All that vegetation provided great cover for the frogs, and within a couple weeks, there were tadpoles in the water trough.

I honestly had mixed emotions about the tadpoles. As I’ve said, I really love frogs, and liked the thought of having them around here, but I was concerned about having them in the water trough that my pets were drinking from. At first, I tried to keep the tadpoles out, but every time I got rid of them, they were back within days. In the mean time, my animals were drinking and even swimming in the trough and staying quite healthy, so I quit fighting the frogs. Since then, I have added more troughs, and a pond, all of which have become homes to the bullfrogs. I have since learned that the tadpoles and young adult frogs eat mosquitoes and mosquito larvae, so they are really keeping the area healthier for all of us.

The adult frogs also eat larger insects, small fish, and if large enough, small birds, and small mammals. In fact, they will pretty much eat anything that will fit in their mouths! Some of these frogs can get to be eight inches long and up to a pound or more in weight (which is why some people, especially in the south, eat them). None of mine have ever gotten nearly that large, though, thank goodness! None of my troughs or my pond are all that large (compared to a pond, lake, or swamp), and most amphibians and reptiles grow to fit their environments. Like so much of our Florida wildlife, the frogs are all hibernating right now, but as soon as the days start to warm up and get longer, there will be tadpoles and frogs again. What are your thoughts on frogs? Do you love them or do they scare you?