Spring Fling!

It was another one of my Freedom Fridays, as I like to call them. The weather was to be warm and partly to mostly sunny, and so my husband and I set out on a day's adventure. We started with a hot and tasty lunch at Couch's in McAlevy's Fort, and then spent the afternoon at Whipple Dam.

The beach will open for swimming there in a few weeks, so on this day, we just waded in the shallows. Much to our delight, we discovered that an amazing amphibian-fest was taking place there on this late April day!

I spotted the biggest bullfrog I have ever seen in my life along the banks, but it was too quick for me. I saw it just half a second before it made a HUGE leap straight into the water: KER-SPLOOSH! I regret not getting a photo; that frog was almost as big as a dinner plate!

The newts were fat and sassy, and I spotted one chasing (herding?) minnows in the shallows. The air was full of frog-song; a chorus of spring peepers, even in the afternoon.

I walked along the edge of the lake just before we left for home, and I saw a fisherman holding up in his hand something that looked like a very large frog. "Did you find a frog?" I shouted, and wandered closer.

He lifted it up higher, and I could see it was not just one but TWO frogs, engaged in a bit of a spring fling. He told me that at least one of them was chirping as he held them.

He showed the pair to his grinning toddler-son, held them up so I could take a few pictures, showed them to his dad, and then gently released them in a quiet place along the shore where they might continue their spring fling relatively undisturbed.

I couldn't really decide which picture I liked best of the two that I am posting. The one in the extras might be my favorite, but I admit I did get a giggle out of what seemed to be a grumpy look in the eyes of the frogs in the photo I've placed above: "AHEM! Privacy, please?"

The soundtrack for these two frogs is Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, with The House Is Rockin'.