Monday, July 12, 2010

Day 4 …… Croak master; more than meets the eye!

So, I’ve learned that you get a little fuzzy doing fieldwork until 1 in the morning. You coming up with silly sayings, and will do just about anything to keep yourself awake.

We slept in today (thankfully), and headed down to the school around 11 to start building toad boxes. I drilled and sanded holes, Lynne cut the tops, and we had 5 beautiful cane toad habitats by 3:30!

Unfortunately, we only had one toad (Dusty) to move into the boxes…. The small toad was tragically killed in an accident (I slipped and fell on the sidewalk). I survived the fall, however I caught myself with my left knee and right palm; now they are scraped to high hell. Apparently, I don’t function well with man-made objects. Doh!

Tonight we found 3 more toads; one right outside of our house, which prompted us to run down to the school and put it in a box. Lynne caught another one right outside the gate to the school, and as I was settling them in (“Draino” and “Grumpy”), I looked to the left and saw the mother of all toads. “Big Mama” is the biggest yet, even bigger than Dusty! She escaped while we were out catching tungaras, but we found her and repaired her box. We’ll see if she stays in there until tomorrow.



Lynne and I ran around a bit by ourselves until Ximena caught up with us, and then the three of us went to the Resort area and videotaped 6 more tungaras. We took them back to the school to work them up (see silly pictures below), then over to the Frog Lab to swab and toe clip them, then back to the resort to release them. Ximena left us at the school, so we did the rest of the trip on our own. So independent are we! Luckily, I only stalled the car 3 times, and 2 of those were trying to do something I wasn’t sure would work.

Here Lynne and I are holding an H. Rosenbergi (Goliath Tree Frog)



Here are our Toad boxes (you can see on the bottom right where Big Mama escaped), and our tungara frog catches of the night

7 comments:

  1. Frogs always look so happy. Even when they're in the hands of a super-intelligent master race bringing them to an alternate world of tests and experimentation.

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  2. I dont like catching toads! How many toads and frogs have you caught? Are the frogs and toads slimy? So how is Panama?

    This writing is from F. at Brown Bear Day Care, she is age 8

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  3. WHEN DID YOU HOLD THE FROG?

    From J.A.> age 7

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  4. F> I have caught many frogs and toads, too many to count! I have caught about 10 cane toads, I have 5 that I keep in little houses.

    J.A.> I hold the frogs and toads at night. Frogs and toads are easy to find at night because they sing to their friends to find each other. If you are awake at night and sleep during the day, then you are NOCTURNAL. :)

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  5. Love these stories.

    Glad you got to sleep in.

    Please slow down, avoid these legs hurts, breaks your moms heart when I hear about them... :(

    The frogs and toads are way too cute*

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  6. Why do toads eat dog food and another question why do you like 2 collect for animals like frogs and do you collect animals?

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  7. That last question was from C.P. age 10

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