Our Own Betty Bullfrog

     Five or six summers ago, I bought six large bullfrog tadpoles, a few of which already had back legs.  I put those tadpoles into our 100 gallon back yard goldfish pond, with the goldfish.  Those tads ate algae off the sides of the pond and other plants in the water.  Later that same summer at least three of those polliwogs developed into small, brown frogs and left the pond.  At that time when I walked across the lawn, three little frogs hopped across the short grass and splashed into the pond.  They, obviously, remembered where the pond was and how to escape danger on land.
     A few years passed and I didn't see any of those frogs again until last summer when we had one small frog perched on vines extending into our little impoundment.  That frog either never left the pond or it found a way to get under the net we put over it to keep great blue herons from catching our fish.  Anyway, there it stayed all last summer.
     This summer our little frog, I assumed it was the same one in our suburban lawn that is not close to any ponds, continued to grow and was big enough to identify as a female bullfrog.  A ridge of skin that started behind each large, golden-brown eye extended around the frog's small ear drum only, indicating a bullfrog of female gender.  She is dark all over on top, except for green around her mouth.  Her belly is light in color and her throat is mottled white and chocolate-brown. 
     Watching Betty, our own bullfrog, I began to think that bullfrogs, and maybe amphibians in general, are a bit smarter than we think.  She certainly adapted to the netting over our impoundment. When Betty is on the lawn when I walk by her, she hops right to our impoundment, lands on the net and immediately wriggles down a hole in the net as if she knew all along exactly where it is.  She goes through a couple different holes in the net at night to hunt for invertebrates on our lawn.  And so sometimes we see her sitting on the floating heater in the pond and other times she hops across the lawn and into the water to escape danger.
     I also have to chuckle at her when she is perched on the heater, but dives into the water at the approach of one of us.  Then, if we are quiet and still, she will come to the surface to breathe and look around, but won't climb onto the heater as long as we are near the pond.  But a few minutes after we leave the water, she judges the danger is past and climbs onto the heater again, her favorite spot by the water.     
     Betty does have to watch for various dangers.  Cats or one of our dogs could catch her.  Or she could be hit with power mower blades or taken home by a child.  She may stray onto our street or fail to get into the pond in fall when the weather turns cold.  These dangers are real in our neighborhood because she is the only one of six still on our lawn, although some of the others could have strayed away, never to return.  And with all that potential danger, plus predation of herons, raccoons, mink and other creatures, it is good that each female frog spawns hundreds of eggs every year.
     Many home-owners have backyard ponds on their lawns with goldfish or koi in them.  If frogs or toads spawn in some of those impoundments, the resulting tadpoles and adult, tailless amphibians are interesting to experience.  They make the ponds and lawns a little more natural.