There is a mouse in the house

We came home the other night, opened the front door only to be greeted by a headless mouse deposited on the carpeting.  Actually, what I first thought was that one of the cats had thrown up, gross, but upon further inspection saw it was a mouse, ewww. 

 I think we have our fine feline Fluffles to thank for the extermination.   

After all, he did gift us with this dried up frog he found in the basement this winter.  

Not sure how all these critters are sneaking in the house.  The frog probably just jumped in, we do find them once in a while because our yard seems to be a frog magnet. On summer nights our house is covered in tree frogs.  Lots of frogs means not many bugs so we are thankful to have to so many. If it gets to plague levels we will have to reevaluate.  The mouse, since I seen no evidence of mouse activity, must have come in with a box we brought in from the garage the day before. Bad move Mr. Mouse, Fluffles is on the job!

Tree Frogs

Our back slider door has been the popular hang out for tree frogs the last couple of weeks.  They are so fun to watch catching bugs and moths.  We call it "Country T.V."  Dancer took all of these pictures.

We have had a couple of icky things happen.  I went out at about 2:00 on morning to take the dog out and stepped on one.  That will wake you up real quick.  Another time Dancer opened the door and one went in between the two doors and came to it's demise.  To make it worse, it's leg got caught when she shut the door and I had to tug it out and throw it off the deck. 

Our lawn mower is broken again but we can't wait for it to get fixed so I  have been spending the last couple of night mowing with the little push mower so it at least looks from the road like we are keeping our yard under control.  As I push a long I am so surprised at how many little toads there are.  With the wet spring and summer we have a bumper crop mosquitoes so they have plenty to eat.

Tree Frog - Inside, outside, underneath

Frogs

We met some homeschool friends at the park this morning so that the kids could play and us adults could have some grown up conversation. I always think of other homeschool parents as coworkers if we had any and some times it is nice to chat with someone in the same business.

The park is in a neighborhood that when it is wet out there is a little creek that runs through it into a big swamp. There was a little water in the creek this morning and it had frogs in it. The kids had a great time catching and putting them in cups that they found. Oh, and one mother's water glass she brought with, but it isn't going to be her glass anymore now that it has had frogs in it. All the kids had a great time doing this except two of Dancer's friends. They thought at 12 years of age that they were just way to cool for this activity. I was glad that Dancer didn't cave to their coolness and went down with the younger kids. She had a great time while they sat on the slides sulking. I guess once you make a big, loud announcement that you aren't going to catch frogs because it is dumb and your friend doesn't follow you, you either have to sulk or take it back and go play. Hopefully next time they will join in with the other kids because the sulking girls looked bored and irritated. Which, now that I type that, would make sense since that is what sulking is.

A sad thing about the frogs was that about half of them only had one back leg. One had a short stubby leg with a couple toes, one had a bump where a leg should have grown and the rest had nothing to mark a leg spot. I would have had a picture but didn't think there would be anything to take a picture of so we left the camera home. I am pretty sure the lack of legs was related to the beautiful weed free lawns in the surrounding house and the park which didn't even have a patch of clover in it. I wonder if when people start having legless children, they will rethink their perfect lawns.

She's back!

Last year we had a toad that lived in the rocks around our house. You can read all about it here: http://minabema.blogspot.com/2008/10/natural-bug-control.html Spark found this girl, he thinks it is a girl, behind the house and was so excited that Toddia was back!!!! The Toddia from last year and the Toddia from this year look vastly different from each other but that must be because she changed over the winter. If that is what he thinks who am I to argue, Spark was excited and that's the main thing. Now we will have to wait and see if Todd shows up again this year.

Natural Bug Control

This is Toddia. She started out as a little toad this spring and as the summer/fall has gone on she has gotten bigger and bigger. Toddia lives in the rocks around our house and has spent her time filling her tummy with crickets. She has a toad friend (Todd) who lives out there with her and they really made a difference in the amount of crickets we had in the house this year. How do we know she is a girl you ask? She has a girl name!

What happens when a toad gets stuck in the mud? Answer: It gets unhoppy!