Sleepin' In: Wood Frogs

Down in the sand where the boys dug a hole,

the autumn rains made the gully even deeper.

On our after-school walk, Noah jumped in and began kicking the sand while I explored the trail.

Noah hollered, "Mom, come here! There's something really cool!"


As I neared, he held out his hands – filled with sandy wood frogs. The tiny reptiles were quite sluggish.

"You found them down there?" I asked. Noah nodded. I said, "I didn't know wood frogs hibernated in the sand. I thought they slept in swamp like the others."

This evening while surfing the web, we learned that in the late fall, wood frogs leave woodland swamps and travel upland to hibernate in upper layers of the soil or under organic litter. While Noah held one by its ribs, the wood frog spoke.

The quacking sound reminded us of the springtime chorus we hear from our front-yard swamp. (I took this wood frog photo back then.)

In April, winter's melt fills the slough and attracts all kinds of critters that need water for mating season. By mid-summer, most of our pond dries up – a perfect habitat for wood frogs that need less than two months to cycle from egg to tadpole to frog.

"You know what's really cool, Noah?" I asked. "You've got your frog T-shirt on today."

"I know," he said. We took advantage of the coincidence to shoot a couple funny photos before we left them to burrow down again.

As Noah jumped in bed tonight, I said, "Did you know a wood frog is sometimes called a 'frog-sicle'?"

"You mean like a popsicle?" he asked. I nodded, "I read that while wood frogs hibernate, their bodies' cells fill with a kind of antifreeze. Then their breathing, brain and heart beat shuts down. Their body tissue freezes, but they don't die. In the spring, the weather warms their body –"


Noah interrupted, "So that way they can wake up and smell the coffee!"

"Did you say: Smell the coffee?" I laughed. Noah nodded, "That's what our teacher tells us sometimes when we're tired and we lay our head down on our desk."

Noah yawned, "Good night, Mom."

'Good night, Noah," I said. "Tomorrow's a 'free day off' from school. So you can sleep in – like the Wood Frogs!"

Happy MEA Weekend!