I'm a Bug Man...

[El Chivo]

To feed my frogs, I've had to become a better bug-catcher. It has been a great two weeks of hunting and learning.

The main food you get at the pet store are crickets. It seems we have a similar, but hardier variety here in Van Nuys. So I caught a few and have them in captivity, hoping for baby crickets. Here's a shot of my breeding stock:

bugs.jpg

They are fun to catch - you have to listen for them, not easy since there are water bugs that sound like crickets. After a while you can tell the difference. Also, cricket colonies are hard to find. I've located two, one at work behind the building and one at the corner gas station.

I wear my bicycle headlamp for light and trap them in a jar. I have a piece of thin metal I slide in between the ground and the jar mouth, trapping them until I can screw the lid on. A very easy and almost sure method. Best time is about midnight.

I've also been catching flies - the frogs seem to prefer winged meals. They are fantastic acrobats and are true studs taking down game. One little one, my youngest, took down a blue-bottle housefly that was about as big as he was. He got it in his mouth but couldn't shut it - too big. The fly lived but was so beaten up that a big brother came by and ate it. But I give the little one high marks for effort. He's just too small yet.

Mostly they eat small fruit flies, I have some store bought fruit flies that can't fly. They also eat mosquito larvae. I have a bucket of water that the mosquitos lay eggs in. Then I dip into this soup and pour the larvae into the tank. When they mature, they fly around inside the tank - they're too big to get out through the screen. However, lately, none make it to maturity. The frogs dive into the water and snag the larvae as they come to the surface.

I also catch winged fruit files. I put down a jar with fruit in it as bait. I have an empty jar with the same size mouth. I turn the empty jar upside down and deftly put it to the mouth of the lower jar. When the flies feel this disturbance, they fly out into the upper jar and buzz around. Their instinct is to fly up and out, so I have plenty of time to cover the bottom, since they don't try to get out that way.

Once the fruit flies are in the jar, I stun them by shaking the jar vigorously. When the flies are no longer flying, just rattling around, they are stunned enough to be dumped into the tank. The small ones can fall right through the screen. The frogs are usually right there, they catch the flies on the bounce most of the time. I also put down fruit in the tank as an attractant - a few flies come in voluntarily throughout the day.

But my favorite pastime is to catch the bigger flies, the common housefly. They're a lot more challenging than crickets. They're too hard to catch with the direct method (plus my tongue gets too dirty) so I use the two-jar method. When I see a fly enter the jar, I stalk him while he eats. I trap him with the empty jar. Like the fruit flies, his instinct is to fly up and I have plenty of time to slide the lid underneath. However you have to be stealthy - he pays attention which the fruit flies don't. It helps if the jar has a label on it - once he goes down to get the food I approach the jar, staying hidden by the label. For attractant I tried fruit, vegetables and meat, but even better is a mixture of egg, yeast, sugar, and corn meal. This smells pretty good and is very strong, and lasts. Flies go for it faster than anything else. After being caught, he has to be really stunned with the shake and bake method or he'll fly right out when I try to fling him into the tank. It can also help to spray a little water on him - wet wings don't work so well. Sometimes I can get two or three at once.

Once a fly is in the tank with the frogs, he's got about six seconds to live. These frogs will eat the crickets, but they make fools of themselves over the big flies. They have figured out how to use their 3D environment to hunt - I saw one frog bank himself off the glass to snag a mosquito. Another one jumped the width of the tank, caught a buzzing fruit fly in mid-air, and landed neatly on the glass of the other side. But the most amazing feat was my biggest frog taking a housefly that was on the screen above. He was upside down on the glass. He leaped, upside down, the length and height of the tank, caught the fly in his mouth, and hung from the screen with one arm while with the other arm he was stuffing the fly in. In size proportion, it would be like one of us leaping across a gymnasium to catch a turkey in our mouth - off the ceiling. Well these guys are incredible, and once they get the hang of it they never miss. My oldest did miss the first time he went after a big fly - it was too fast for him. He just had to adjust to the speed, like a big league batter adjusting to a new pitcher. Second time he got the fly.

Well I realize I've gone on too long about this but I'm having the time of my life with these guys. They're nothing like those boring lizards or snakes that just lay there. They're always stalking something, jumping around or swinging from the rafters like monkeys.

baja26.jpg

[gamekeeper]

Frog watching sure sounds more interesting than watching TV..

[AJMD429]

Cool. Some lizards are actually pretty active, too though.

[bdhold]

happy frogs

[Gobblerforge]

Bud................Bud......................Er.......Bud....................Wise.....................Bud...........
Gobbler

[Ben_Rumson]

Fun read!

[El Chivo]

one little update - after catching houseflies, I used to shake them up to stun them so they wouldn't fly away when I put them in the terrarium.

This was a pain and somewhat unreliable, since they come to pretty quickly, and tend to be agitated. And the shaking was no fun,

However, one cool morning I noticed the flies were very sluggish, which made sense. So I decided to try refrigerating them.

This works a treat. Flies in a jar, refrigerated for 7 minutes are immobile and unconscious. But they are alive. I toss these cold flies into the tank without any problems like escaping or trying to stay inside the jar. They're totally helpless.

Then in two or three minutes they warm up and start fluffing their wings to fly around again, which makes the frogs snap to attention.

The other day I got 11 at one time. They're easier to deal with than crickets.

I'm very proud that at 53 years of age I have finally attained the level of intellect and analytical skills to devise an effective method of outsmarting houseflies. Plus it's fun.

[kimwcook]

I'm very proud that at 53 years of age I have finally attained the level of intellect and analytical skills to devise an effective method of outsmarting houseflies.

Sometimes I feel I don't have the intellect to even do that.

[Redman2006]

Catching insects and raising them works pretty well for reptiles and amphibians, but be careful. Certain ones can be an issue. If you are really into the critters, I am sure you already know, but things like lightning bugs can kill them.

Jeff