invasion...by door frog

Readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with my respect and admiration for our outdoor amphibious comrades, the door frogs. They reduce the population of annoying insects in the general vicinity of the porch lights, plus it's just neat to see a herd of frogs hanging out on the deck and front porch. Saturday night, I counted 11 frogs on the deck alone. Groovy.

The music took a different tone tonight, however, when door frog crossed a line. The boys are well aware of my philosophy regarding insects and arachnids:  If ants, spiders, praying mantises (yes, we have lots of those), bees, etc. are doing their thing in their natural environment (aka, outside), I have no issues. Live and let live. But if they come in the house, it's on like a pot of neckbones. This is human habitat.

Which leads us to tonight's incident. While decompressing after work, a flash of movement caught my eye. Lo and behold, there was door frog, climbing our living room bookshelves not two feet away from me. Why, door frog? The outdoor world is your oyster, and our outdoor lights are host to your buffet. Sure, you showed good literary taste, climbing from Neal Stephenson to Nick Hornby on the next shelf up, then moving laterally through the entire Tami Hoag collection to come to rest on Frank Herbert. But that doesn't matter, because door frog belongs outside, and you were inside.

So began the great door frog chase of 2014. It lacked the noise and excitement of previous critter hunts we've enjoyed (chipmunks and bats come immediately to mind). Door frog quickly evaded me, leading to several minutes of flashlight-assisted under-furniture searching that proved fruitless. Charlie was sleeping on the couch next to me, and when I turned to harass him for not getting up and using his nose of power to help me, I saw that door frog was sitting right on the dog's head. Man, I wish I had a picture of that, I'd never let the dog live that down. Charlie never batted an eyelash. Or woke up.

More chasing ensued, and I eventually cornered door frog in a corner between the wall and a stereo speaker, as you can see from the hastily taken pic above. He/she was quickly grabbed and released into the wild (aka the front porch), and the moment ended. Charlie raised his head and woofed, then went to the back door expecting to be let out for his late-night sabbatical. What a bum.

So what have we learned? Stay outside, door frog. Inside is no place for you. You don't see me hanging out on the siding, eating bugs that gather around the deck lights. I don't invade your space, so don't you invade mine.