Girly Frog, Changes Clothes

 

Did you know frogs shed their skin????

Totally blown away by that, just a little fruit of my naptime research on Science Tuesday. The boys and I went out for a little hike this morning and found this beautiful she-frog. She's a "green frog" which is a real name, not just the obvious descriptor for her coloring. We found out she was a girl when we got home and did some digging. Girl green-frogs have a pale creamy belly (you can just see the edges of hers peeking out below her jaw), boys have a yellow throat. Lady green frogs also have an ear (that circle behind her eye) that is the same size as their eyes. Boy froggies have whopper ears. I wonder if they can hear better than the females. 

But yes...the skin. Frogs can breathe through their skin and drink through their skin and that's why they are slimey to the touch. They secrete a mucus to keep their delicate hides all perfectly in tune. If they can't drink or breathe because the works get clogged they'd be in major trouble...so they change outfits a lot...keeping their skin in perfect condition. When the old skin needs replacing they wiggle out of it (like a snake) and pull it over their heads with their front feet and then......

.....they eat it. 

Surreal, right? Nature. Its a trip.

Bruiser!

Having a skateboard and being too macho to wear your elbow pads has its caveats.

 Poor little toughman is all scraped up and honestly, it looks a good deal worse in person than it does in this picture. He's a dedicated little boarder though, still gung-ho to keep rolling through the pain and not crying over it until he was indoors and trying to get ready for bed. So, we've had a generous coating of triple antibiotic cream and a little dose of Tylenol to calm to tears and at dinner we rolled his bum sleeve up greaser style so the cuff wouldn't touch the raw skin. Poor little wincing sport nut. Hope it feels a lot better in the morning like I heard A telling him as he tucked him in. Its easy to forget how much those sliding burns across pavement hurt...man do they sting like the dickens!

What Do Cleopatra and Medusa Have In Common?

Snakes. That's what! Yesterday afternoon our kind neighbor Mr. Wilson, stopped by and mentioned that he'd keep a close eye on the boys when we're all out romping in the yard if he were me, someone had just run over a copperhead at the top of our drive. *shudder*

Surprise! We have copperheads here. I had no idea that we had any venomous snakes although apparently it appears that we have not one but two (the much rarer timber rattler also can be seen here one in a blue moon too) And yes, we have accidentally settled in perfectly ideal Copperhead country, right here at our condo. Wikipedia says they like moist, swampy lowlands (hello!), mixed decidious forests and rocky ledges for sun bathing (about those stone-walls).

The pictures are not a live snake of course, but just some shots of our snakeskin we found last year as you may remember from this post. I dug it out of the back of the nature shelf after Mr. Wilson left though and had a good hard look at it to see if had any copperheady signs about it...its a bit unnerving to know that we found it on the edge of the driveway, strangely near where this latest sighting was.

I actually feel just a little jello-legged about this new discovery and although I had kind of thought of gardening that afternoon and this morning, I still haven't been out. Handily, it turns out that copperheads are one of the least venomous pit vipers (a family of snakes with heat pits on their heads for sensing prey) so you're quite likely to live. Or at least I would be. Not so sure what Dee's chances would be.

I have a feeling some serious lessons about reptilian manners are in order and some careful coaching about not playing on the stone walls on those balmy sunny days. Good thing the walls belong to the neighbor anyhow...I have a reason to try to keep them off now.

The reverse of the old saying goes, "There are not gains without some small losses." This is the price one pays I suppose for racking up higher growing zone numbers. Shoulda known there'd be some little hitch. Lets hope we can just learn to live with the snakes and stay out of their way. Its good to note that there has not been a death from copperhead bites in the last 100 years in our area, that the snakes are actually rare enough that they are a protected species and that they are intensely afraid of humans and will generally avoid us at all costs. Now if only they didn't have that habit of freezing when danger is very near. The easiest way to get bitten by a copperhead is to accidentally step on it. They're stinking well camouflaged.