Froggie Friday

Last night, coming in from the barn after critter late check, a figure on Julia’s ox-goad caught my eye.

We’re blessed with lots of frogs and toads around here but usually, they hang out in the creek, pond or marshy areas. When I leaned in for a closer look, a frog jumped from the goad onto the kitchen window. Julia ran inside to see the frog up close and I snapped a few photos.

What kind of frog is that?

It’s hard to tell where the indoors starts and stops at our cabin. Our home is small, about 450 square feet. Our doors and windows are usually open. Of the eighteen windows in our cabin, only two have screens. That means blue-tailed skinks, crane flies, grandaddy long legs, hummingbirds and the occasional phoebe drop in for a visit.

We know the superior gaze of a toad watching us climb the front stairs. We’ve witnessed epic struggles between spiders and yellow jackets in the spider web above the woodstove. We’ve had wrens fly in our bedroom window, tickle our toes, then find their way out another window.

We like that the lines between the indoors and outdoors overlap. That’s the kind of life we strive to live.

So what kind of frog is that? North Carolina is home to over two dozen kinds of frogs and toads and sixteen kinds of tree frogs. Walk around the place and you might find a plain old Green Tree Frog or a Gray Tree Frog. You might run into a Northern Cricket frog, a Southern Cricket Frog, a Pine Barrens Frog or even a Barking Tree Frog.

I’d like to think the little dude or dudette stuck to our kitchen window was a Mountain Chorus Frog. I have no idea what it was doing stuck to our window. Maybe hunting for bugs drawn to the light. Maybe scoping out a place for the winter. Maybe he just wanted to come in and pull up a place next to the woodstove.

A week ago, we had our first frost. I wish our tree frog a good winter. I wish you a good weekend. Keep your eyes open. You never know who wants to join you.

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