it's a hard knock life

I don’t know much about frogs. I used to try and catch them at summer camp every year as a child but other than that I haven’t encountered them very often. This year, however, Oklahoma City seems to be overrun with frogs. Maybe it’s just my neighborhood…or my house. Several weeks ago I pulled into my driveway on a rainy day (one of many we’ve had this summer). It had been one of those days where the rain came down so hard that you could barely see in front of you. By the time I got home the rain had stopped but water was still flooding down my driveway like a waterfall. As I pulled in I noticed a frog hopping across the driveway just in time for me to run over it with my left front tire. I’m not a frog killer…I just didn’t have time to react before the frog’s life was ended so suddenly by my car. Not your typical type of road kill. It was sad but I got over it.

Since that day, my roommate and I have noticed several frogs hanging out around our house. One particular frog lived in the backyard. He didn’t seem to have any frog friends so he had the whole backyard to himself. Notice how I’m using past tense when talking about the frog. Here’s what happened…

Yesterday I decided to mow the lawn. I was almost finished with the backyard and just had one small line of grass to mow near the fence. As I was pushing the lawn mower our little frog friend jumped out of the tall grass right into the path of my mower. He practically jumped underneath it…I barely realized what happened before I had already run it over. I was devastated and too scared to look back. I’m crossing my fingers that the frog made it out alive but he’s probably looking down on me from Froggy heaven right now.

Once I calmed myself down and finished the yard I noticed that my neighbor had come outside to do some yard work as well. It seemed odd that he was running straight toward my yard with the weed whacker in hand. Just before he got to my fence I saw a frog jump through the chain links and out of the way of the weed whacker. My neighbor was chasing it out of his yard. It’s possible that he’s a little crazy but we now have a new frog in our back yard.