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Sunday 25 May 2008

Blog the frog

This little guy frightened the living daylights out of me today. We had bought a load of peat to add to the border along our driveway as I wanted to plant some flowers and our existing soil was pretty poor. Mark and I had spread the peat while the children were resting (we figured the Podlings would spread the peat further than we wanted!), then we all went out to plant the flowers when they got up. I was happily putting my Chrysanthemums in the ground when this frog jumped right by my hand. Worms and spiders I was prepared for, but the frog was a bit of a shock! We think it must have been in the sack of peat we bought yesterday. The poor thing had met with an accident at some point as it was missing one of its back legs below the knee. It seemed pretty mobile though as we have no idea where it is now!

The Podlings were absolutely thrilled with the frog. They watched it for a while, then pretended to be frogs by jumping up and down the driveway. After tea, we sang 'five little speckled frogs' and read a couple of stories with frogs in them. Lily was still talking about the 'fwoggy' at bedtime.

Incidentally, I have a new respect for the bravery of my husband, who took this photo of the frog by lying on his stomach right in front of it and using the optical zoom on the camera. I would have been terrified of the thing jumping in my face!

2 comments:

Lainey said...

Hurray for the common frog (Rana temporaria! I think the genus part of its latin name is really nice considering how ugly people think frogs are! Especially when you consider that the typically cute rabbit's name is Oryctolagus cuniculus!Glad the podlings are enjoying nature, hope your frog found somewhere to live in the end!

Paula said...

Okay, so now you're just showing off! You're right about the rabbit's Latin name though. How can something that cute have a name like that!