Don't step on my frog!

For the past two summers now, there has been a frog in our flowerbed near the front door. Not only is he in the flowerbed, but he has sculpted his own private entrance. Unfortunately, the little door to his kingdom is a space about half an inch wide between the pavers on our front porch and the brick border of the flowerbed itself.

The only way that the frog can get to his underground cave beneath the flowerbed is to back into it, literally back legs first with his head and front legs resting on the porch pavers while he wriggles and holds his tummy in and crams his little brown frog butt into that opening. All the while he's doing that, he is very vulnerable to any passing human feet that happen to step on that part of our front porch.

About a month ago, one of our around-the-corner neighbors came by with her granddaughter to ask us if we knew anyone who had lost a black and white dog. She knew that the dog she found wasn't ours, but she also knew that my husband knows just about every dog on this side of the subdivision, so she stopped by to ask if we knew who the lost dog belonged to. While we were talking to her near our front porch, I saw "my" little brown frog come hopping up the walkway, heading towards his home sweet home. Without missing a beat in the conversation, I told our neighbor and her granddaughter to be careful of the frog. Between all of us out there, I was certain that eight human feet were just too many for the frog to maneuver around. The neighbor looked down and asked me if that was my pet frog. I told her that he wasn't exactly a pet, but he did live underneath our flowerbed and I just didn't want him to get stepped on. "Well, if that one happens to turn into a frog pancake, then y'all can just go down to the bayou and get y'all another one."

I have lost count of how many times I have walked out our front door with Gracie and there's the frog, with the back half of his body squirming into that tiny space and the front half of him looking up at me and probably saying "Hey! Look down! And be careful with that dog!" As soon as we get to the front porch, Gracie must smell the frog because her nose immediately goes right down to that spot and she sniffs the face of the frog and then continues down the pathway while the frog looks up at me with bulging eyes. (I don't know if his eyes always bulge or if that happens because he's holding his breath so he can tuck in his tummy in order to fit into that tiny space.)

Once the frog gets down inbetween the porch pavers and the brick border of the flowerbed, I have no idea where he goes from there. For all I know, he has excavated a multi-roomed frog condo underneath the mulch of the flowerbed. And does he bring other frogs down there? "Look, Harry, all you have to do is back into this half-inch slit between the pavers and the bricks, hold your breath and push your butt down while your front legs are dangling over the edge of the porch. And don't mind that dog of theirs-- she'll just sniff your face and be on her way."

I also wonder if this is the same frog that was underneath the flowerbed last summer. He looks to be the same size as last year's frog, so he's either full grown or is very careful what he eats. Too many flies and bugs and his belly isn't going to fit into that space no matter how long he can hold his breath.

Every time I go out the front door, I check to make sure that the opening between the porch pavers and the brick border is still there. One careless move by the guys who do our lawn, and the frog will lose his entrance and maybe his underground castle will collapse right down on top of him. And then there will be a squished frog down there underneath the pink impatiens with no way out.