Earlier this week my friend Sean Bonner tweeted the need to find a new home for a trio of tree frogs for whom he and his wife Tara had been caring. Turns out the tiny things can be disproportionately noisy for their size, and Sean was having a hard time focusing on the management of his global network of internet domination, much less trying to enjoy delicious coffees while sounding business-legit what with a whole lot of croaking going on in the background of their Venice apartment.
So on impulse I tweeted back saying I’ll take ’em and that night I asked Susan “Howsabout some treefrogs?” Initially she was all “Huh? Treefrogs?” But then as the week progressed she got even more excited than I was and on Saturday Sean and Tara arrived with said three amphibious vehicles and some crickets (which they eat), along with a bag o’ rocks and a vivarium riparium terrarium aquarium solarium within which to contain the critters.
Due to the potential noise factor, Susan and I set ’em up outside on the backyard patio. But on Sunday we were forced to relocate them indoors for a couple reasons. First, they were pretty quiet across the evening, with only a couple brief vocalization demonstrations. That will undoubtedly change, but for now they’re indoors because of the second reason: It’s much easier to catch one in an enclosed space rather than in the great outdoors. This we learned the hard way after we fed them some crickets and then I id
iotically decided I wanted to hold one and it understandably wasn’t really in the mood to be held. Promptly jumping from my hands it then hopped through the fence into the neighbor’s yard forcing me to trespass in panic onto their property where it leaped away from several of my attempts to apprehend it until ultimately and much to my relief I corralled it and was spared having to report back to Sean and Tara that, uhhhhh… I accidentally introduced a European treefrog to the wilds of Silver Lake south of Sunset Boulevard. Whew!
So inside they came to their new place by the window next to the stairs, where we pretty much left them alone and except for a couple episodes they were very quiet the rest of the day and night, and where I learned they’re pretty tough to properly photograph (click for marginal biggification).
Follow