I thought Ribbit was dead. So I scooped him up the other day and hauled him into the house to show my wife.
But as I carried him to the kitchen table to see if she wanted to try a kiss and bring him back to life, Ribbit slowly opened his eyes.
“Yuck!” my wife said while turning her head away from both of us.
No kiss. And no prince would Ribbit become.
Ribbit is a bullfrog who currently lives in my little pond in our backyard. He apparently was going into hibernation mode when I saw him in the shallow water and woke him up. I felt a little bad about that.
While I carried him back to the pond, he tried to jump out of my hands. He almost escaped because, to be honest, he is as slippery as a bar of Irish Spring soap — which I used after handling him
He came to us via the granddaughter of our neighbors, Jim and Suzette. Six-year-old Mila caught him in her parents’ garden and named him, too.
Mila is as cute as can be,/but Ribbit … well, not so much. He does have amazingly long legs, though, to go along with his bulging eyes, wide mouth and slimy skin.
I checked on him the next day and he looked like a tiny hippo peering out of the water at me. When I took another step toward him, he was gone — the little Poseidon of my pond.
I’m concerned about him.
My pond is small (although my waterfall is pretty impressive) and Ribbit can frog-kick across it in three easy strokes. I’m not sure if it is an ideal spot for him to hibernate. Frogs can hibernate in water but if it freezes, there has to be at least some small opening for oxygen to get through. And what if I’m not around for part of the winter?
I’ve probably also awakened him out of his hibernation one too many times. I did carry him down to the big retention pond at the bottom of our neighborhood, but there wasn’t any water. So I carried him back.
I know, I know. Sometimes, you just have to let Mother Nature do her own thing and hope for the best.
Mother Moor — my wife, not my mom — is of that way of thinking. “Leave that poor frog alone,” she says. “You spend more time worrying about him than you do about your own family. And what makes you think he is a boy.”
Well, I just assumed he was since he — or she or it — is one huge hopper.
But then I did a little studying and discovered that female bullfrogs are usually bigger than their male counterparts. Females have white throats and males yellow. But I wasn’t going to pull Ribbit out of the pool again to check.
Maybe next spring. I have high hopes of training Ribbit into being a long jumper next spring. Possibly a record setter. I think he/she has it in him/her.
But, of course, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions.