It's Not Easy Being Green

I first met Ellin Beltz at a meeting of the Ferndale Garden Club, where I was giving a talk about earthworms.  I finished my talk, people petted the worms and said nice things about them, and we all went home. At that meeting, Ellin came up to me and introduced herself. She said something like, “You do worms. I do frogs.”

“OK,” I said. When people get together and talk about warm-blooded creatures—cats or chickens or children—there’s a certain amount of gushing that goes on. But a wormologist and a frogologist (that’s actually an oligochaetologist and a herpetologist) get together, they can cut through the small talk pretty quickly. Damp. Slimy. Moss. Shade. Dirt. Got it.

And now Ellin’s got a new book out, Frogs: Inside Their Remarkable World. It’s been published by Firefly Books and no matter what your current relationship with frogs is, this book is bound to improve it. There are male frogs wrestling for territory, lone, contemplative frogs hanging from a blade of grass, and—yes, it’s on page 97—even a very small bullfrog eating a very large earthworm. Ouch.

Ellin’s relationship with frogs began almost thirty years ago when she bought a house in Chicago. Her daughter, who was three at the time, said that she wanted a pond in the backyard. “Then she wanted flowers,” Ellin said, “and she wanted frogs—she wanted nature, basically. She’d been watching too much nature TV.”

They took a trip to the country in search of nature. “We found some frogs,” Ellin said, “and some turtles, and some water lilies. Very irresponsibly, we brought it all home and dumped it into the pond, and only the turtle survived. I felt really guilty about those frogs.”

To learn more about frogs, she took her daughter to a couple meetings of the Chicago Herpetological Society. She learned a lot, her daughter got along with the other kids, and pretty soon, they were regulars. The Society asked her if she’d like to write a column for them, and she agreed. For the last 18 years, she has written a monthly round-up of amphibian-related news—a kind of “News of the Weird” for the cold-blooded crowd. Recent features include this Quote of the Month: “[Reptiles] are wonderful pets for a busy lifestyle. Plus, they don't bark and wake up the neighbors.” There was also a story about a German man who was arrested at an airport in Lima with 450 tropical frogs in his luggage. He claimed he wanted to start a zoo back home. Ellin’s headline read, “Noah Only Needed Two of Each.”

Her work with the Chicago Herpetological Society led her back to school, where she completed a master’s degree in geology and studied the decline of the amphibians and the rise of reptiles 250 million years ago. That led to a guidebook for a museum exhibit, and that led to a phone call from a publisher—Firefly Books—who asked her if she’d like to write a book about frogs.

The result is a big hardcover book full of brilliant photographs of frogs and Ellin’s clear and useful explanations of their lifestyles and habits. You’ll learn about the world’s smallest frog, which can perch comfortably on your fingernail and still have room to stretch out, and you’ll meet green tree frogs with ruby-red eyes that you can’t help but fall in love with.

Ellin is an advocate for frog-friendly landscaping. She says that there are only two things gardeners need to do to attract frogs. First, stop using chemicals. (Let me repeat that for emphasis: Stop. Using. Chemicals.) Second, think like an amphibian. That means asking yourself some basic frog questions: Where can I hide? What do I eat? Will I mate on your property or somewhere else?

Once you know the answers to those questions, you’ve got a frog garden. Create frog hiding places like upturned pottery or low-growing shrubs, and for tree frogs, hang little plastic tubs (like butter tubs) from the shrubs and keep a little water in them. If you’re near coastal toad habitats, just leaving a few inches of water in a plastic tub will give toads a place to breed. As the water level drops, little toads will hop out. (Toads reproduce in five to six days, so if eggs don’t appear right away, you can dump the water so you don’t attract mosquitoes.)

“I love gardening for frogs,” Ellin said. “That’s what got me into it—gardening for animals in the middle of the city.”

Got frogs?  Anybody?

Comments

[Ed Bruske]

About time frogs got a book of their own...

[Eliz]

I have been told that frogs will come to my pond of their own accord, but I'm doubtful.

Even if you don't have frogs, your phone can sound like a frog. The Center for Biological Diversity has free endangered species ringtones on their site and there are TONS of frogs. www.rareearthtones.org

[Heather Galindo]

I have frogs but no pond. Just the usual swampy Houston yard with just enough low spots and rocks and dark spaces and neglected corners. That's where I always see the little guys. I like to hear them croaking at night. We also have tons of bright green lizards, too. I wouldn't be so amazed if we had a normal yard but our is so tiny and so urban, it delights the heck out of me to see things surviving without any coaxing or effort on my part. Including the plants. :)

[Ellis Hollow]

One of the first websites I ever did was for Peter Ducey, a herpetologist at SUNY Cortland. I just checked and probably 10 years later, it's still online. Nice little key for amphibians and reptiles in the Northeast, in case you ever want to ID what you've found: http://www.cortland.edu/herp/

[Tyra]

Interesting stuff, I´m glad that I didn´t have to say oligochaetologist out loud.:-)