A frog at the window
The ledge of my kitchen window is over a metre off the floor of the deck which is, itself, close to two metres off the ground. Yet despite these giddying heights, there was a small frog on the ledge last night, looking in as I looked out:
Apologies for the terrible photo. I’m a notoriously bad photographer at the best of times, and I had to blow this photo up quite a bit to make my little friend visible, so the quality plummeted. For those who are interested, my froggy friend is about two inches long from nose to tail and a grey colour with a slight greenish tinge.
As I have a pond near the house, I’m used to hearing frogs serenading each other at night:
I’m also used to finding them hidden in moist pockets under rocks, but I see them only rarely and never at my window.
After taking a few photos to prove that I wasn’t going mad, I went out and attempted to rescue Sir Frog, but said amphibian would have put Spider Man to shame. The suction pads on his fingers and toes allowed him to jump long distances and stick like glue when he landed.
Clearly those suction cups are how Sir Frog managed to climb up to the deck and from there to the window ledge, but I’m still baffled as to his motivation. Why leave the nice, moist environs of the pond to climb the dry slopes of Mount Everest?
The only explanation that makes even the slightest amount of sense is that Sir Frog came in search of a new, moist habitat in my plant pots. I’ve been growing heaps of tomatoes this summer, and tomatoes require lots of water so…
Far fetched? Perhaps, but most of Melbourne has been in the grip of a long dry spell since the start of February and everything has dried out:
I took this photo about two weeks ago to show how many gum leaves are covering the ground. I raked up that knee high pile from just the steps and the small cleared area shown in the photo.
The whole block is covered with gum leaves shed since the beginning of summer. I know because I mowed everywhere as part of my pre-fire season clean up. Now look at it. Deciduous trees shed their leaves at the end of autumn. Eucalypts shed them during the summer. Low maintenance? Hardly.
The most recent photo shows how dry the soil has become:
Areas trafficked by the alpacas are now so dry the earth has turned to powdery dust. You can see the contrast between the area that hasn’t received any grey water and the area that has. In the moist soil, grass and weeds are struggling to come back to life again. In the dry area there is nothing. Perhaps this is why Sir Frog came looking for a new home.
Speaking of Sir Frog, I did manage to rescue him in the end. I put him out in the garden and can only hope that he survives until we get some real rain. In Warrandyte, we’ve had only a millimetre or two since the start of February. It was barely enough to lay the dust. If you think fire season is over, think again.
acflory
