I love frogs! Living in a rural, subtropical area allows me to see lots of interesting wildlife, and I keep a good bit of my property wild to encourage the wildlife. I enjoy most of the plants and animals that live in this area, but I have always had a special place in my heart for frogs. My absolute favorites are the green tree frogs, but just behind them are the Southern cricket frogs.

Every spring and summer as the weather starts to warm up, we find a lot of tadpoles in the water troughs and our little pond. By late spring we have adult frogs of several different types hanging around. Some of them get pretty used to people coming and going, and even get used to the dogs when they are outside. The last two summers we have had a couple of cricket frogs that made themselves at home on our front porch. In the evenings, as the sun went down, they would come out and hunt for crickets, spiders, moths, beetles, and other insects that were attracted by the porch light and light from the windows. Their “click, click, click” calls could get pretty intense since they use the calls to protect their territory.

You could pretty much count on the cricket frogs to be out on the porch every night, and they got so used to us that you had to look where you were stepping when you went outside in the evening. One even tried to get into the house, one night. Fortunately, he didn’t make it in (if he had, the cats would have been on him in a second). After that, we had to be even more careful! Now that the weather has cooled off, the frogs have gone into hibernation, and won’t be back until the spring, when they will start laying eggs. Fall and winter bring other interesting things to our area, but I will miss my frogs!