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ST PETERSBURG TIMES (Florida) 21 July 03 Frog days of summer can leave you jumpy (Robert King)
"So the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into your house, into your bedchamber, on your bed, into the houses of your servants, on your people, into your ovens, and into your kneading bowls." - Book of Exodus
In this very wet and froggy summer of 2003, one could read those words and be tempted to wonder if we are being beset by a plague of Old Testament proportions.
This summer, frogs have been hovering around my house like autograph seekers.
There are frogs clinging to my front door when I get home on nights when I work late. There are frogs making themselves at home in the houseplants on my back porch. There are baby frogs (a.k.a. tadpoles) sprouting legs in the little pond outside our kitchen window.
I have chased frogs on the back porch and in the living room and in the kitchen.
One scampered into the narrow crevice between our piano and the living room wall, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out where it was hiding.
I gave up the search thinking the frog was going to be a new family pet. But then my 3-year-old daughter, Annie, went over to the piano and banged the keys. I could not help but chuckle at the thought of the poor creature's head exploding.
Just the other night, I went into the kitchen for something when a frog leaped from nowhere and onto the counter next to me. We looked at each other for a moment - the frog and I. Then, I went after him.
We shadowboxed for a few minutes on the linoleum, but he succumbed to my wicked left hook.
It was not long after this kitchen encounter that I began to ask myself what is up with all the frogs. My snooping journalistic instincts were reinforced when, the next day, one of my colleagues mentioned that her two granddaughters had been grabbing frogs off the street and stuffing them into the mailbox to protect them from traffic.
So, I did what any journalist would do: I got something to eat. But after that I picked up the phone and called up one of our state's great repositories of scholarly endeavor and asked, "Y'all got anybody who knows about frogs?"
Amazingly, the folks at the University of Florida knew right where to send me - Mark Hostetler, assistant professor of frogology. Though he was about to sit down to supper with his family, he was good enough to indulge a few questions about his favorite amphibian.
I asked him about the frogs this summer, and he replied, "We're seeing more frogs." And it suddenly made me very glad we are spending gazillions of dollars for such fine research.
I pressed on and asked if all this rain has had something to do with the enormous explosion in the frog population. He said, "Yes."
Now we were getting somewhere.
These are high times for the frog population, but nothing extraordinary - just part of nature's cyclical rhythms, Hostetler said.
After several years of drought, there's water everywhere, even in places that have long been dry and contain no fish that might be interested in eating a frog. These are called "vernal" pools, Hostetler said, and they are like frog resort towns.
To reduce the frogs around your house, Hostetler suggested that you turn off your lights and close your curtains. Light, of course, attracts bugs. And frogs eat bugs.
But what about all this hollering I hear the frogs doing at night?
Hostetler said the noise is the voices of thousands of male frogs doing their very best Barry White impersonation. Calling out to the females, the chirp is loosely translated: "Can't get enough of your love, babe."
Then I asked assistant professor Hostetler, dean of frogology, an important question with significant public health implications: Can you really catch warts if a frog pees on you?
"No," he said. "It's a myth."
Feeling I had reached an ultimate truth, I said good night to the professor and went home to listen to the frogs sing the blues.
Frog days of summer can leave you jumpy

I am quite disappointed in this artical. I'm in Tampa FL and personally would have like to see more information. Some journalist eh? Nothing more than a vague wording stating the obvious. I wish they would have "researched" a bit more and asked about "what frogs?" "How does the green TF population look?" Or any new information on the wellbeing of such frogs at the Birdvoice Frog all the other Florida frogs that are disappearing in large numbers.

Suppose I'll have to do my own "investigating" and pass that along to the St. Pete Times.
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Heather

I, personally, just have issues with anyone who rather live around a myriad of bugs including mosquitoes, instead of frogs.