Well, actually, Froggy didn’t do the “hunting”, we did.
Jett is fascinated with toads. Every night he clambers under our porch steps and the basketball hoop stand looking for toads, big and small. Then he puts them in a little cage and just stares at them until bedtime. Then he lets them go and the whole process starts the next evening. We’ve probably caught (and traumatized) the same toads over and over. We should tag them so we can keep track.
In any case, in order to spice it up a bit, we decided to go toad hunting down the dirt road last night. This was John’s idea since the last few nights he had been driving home (yes, down the dirt road), he said it was like the frog scene from the movie Magnolia. So we piled into the Jeepster taking new dog Junior with us since he’d been begging for a car ride since he got here: John drove, Jett had shotgun, Junior and I were relegated to the back.
It was a full(ish) moon, but still quite dark since the dirt road is lined with tall trees. The only real light the headlights. Our first lap down the dirt road yielded nothing but a bunch of rocks that looked like toads. The second lap…success! 10 frogs still as statues in front of us. Jett hopped out of the Jeep and the chase began. Actually, it was more like a ridiculous dance. He was running around in circles, bobbing and weaving, heading them off when they got too close to the side of the road, John and I yelling directions and encouragement in between hysterical fits of laughter…but he couldn’t catch one!
John decided he would show him how it was done. That was even more hysterical watching a grown man doing a jig in the headlights on a dark dirt road, but he did manage to catch some. And eventually so did Jett.
We bagged 10 toads in all which came home with us for an evening of being cramped into a small cage (they were so packed in and stacked on each other, Jett said they looked like a frog pyramid) and stared at intently on one side by Jett, the other side by Frankie the kitten. Both of them more fascinated than the other. They were humanely released at bedtime. Good for them.
I’m not so sure how I feel about it since we’ve added to our immediate local (my house!) toad population. When they jump, I jump. Ick. They’d better eat a lot of mosquitoes.