MAM Day XXX – Amphibian Interlude

I’m repeating this post because the timing for it is better today and because I’m busy getting ready for my Passover Seder.

It’s that time of year…The frogs will be heading across muddy VT roads to get to their Spring homes any day now. Just one warm rainy night is all it will take to get them going.

Many of them don’t make it because they get run over by cars. I collect their dried remains. I find them beautiful in a weird kind of way.
I call this assemblage “Dead Frog Dancing in the Moonlight”

I’m also an amphibian crossing guard directing traffic around the frogs and salamanders when they cross the roads on the first rainy night in Spring.

Sometimes I have to carry the frogs across the road myself.
If they do make it across they lay their myriads of eggs in the relative safety of vernal pools.
Here’s a Costa Rican frog wearing their snail party hat.
And this is a frog fossil.

“Fossil evidence suggests that frogs and toads, known as anurans (Roman meaning having no tail), have existed since at least the Jurassic Period, with some fossils dating back over 160 million years, and their evolutionary history is being revealed through discoveries like this 111-million-year-old fossil”. They survived beyond the time when dinosaurs disappeared.

Ribbit…

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