Carolyn Herriot

There’s A Frog In My Fridge!

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Carolyn Herriot is a food activist, author, passionate gardener and cook, who believes that healthy eating is the path to healthy aging. She encourages local food security through her books ‘The Zero-Mile Diet’ and has travelled extensively as a lecturer and workshop leader. After operating The Garden Path Centre in Victoria for 25 years she recently relocated to Yellow Point south of Nanaimo, where she has been trying her hand at farming in a rural community. She is currently enrolled as a student at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition and still writes regularly for local publications under the heading From Farm to Table.

We used to offer farm stays to foreign travellers when we owned an acreage

in Victoria; many people from around the world stayed with us over the

years. I’ll never forget the day I opened the fridge to find a large taped

brown box inside. Upon enquiring as to what this was, a young man from

California sheepishly informed me that there was a frog in the box. At first I

merely laughed him off, responding that he could “pull the other leg as it had bells on it”.

 

Seniors home care, care facilities,RV parks B &B, Churches, Brew pubs, craft breweries, vineyards, distilleries, Pets BC. Seniors 101, Island Voices promoting the products and services available for seniors on Vancouver Island. Seniors 101 lifeline. Snowbirds. Employment. Politics. Vancouver Island Now. Island woman magazine. Around the Island, Newsletters.“Ask your husband. He told me to do it!” he replied. Upon further enquiry

my husband told me that Dustin had found an enormous Bullfrog

(Lithobates catesbeiana) on our driveway and didn’t know what to do with

We knew that the Bullfrog is bad news, it has no natural predators and

eats birds, garter snakes and ducklings and other smaller species of frogs.

Most of B.C.’s native frogs are little more than a bite-sized snack for

Bullfrogs, and there is evidence that Bullfrog colonizations of lakes are

followed by declines in the native Red-legged frog and Pacific Chorus frog

populations.

 

My husband very astutely phoned UVic and talked to Purnima

Govindarajulu, an expert on the subject of Bullfrogs. The humane advice

given was to slow its metabolism down by putting it in the fridge, and then

to put it in the freezer where it would slowly freeze to death. “If you think

you are going to put that thing in the freezer with all the food you can think

again!” I said, admonishing my husband for not knowing me better.

 

This Bullfrog has invaded many lakes locally, where you may hear the deep

bwaa, bwaa call of the males in the spring and summer; the calls can carry

up to a kilometre. Sometimes, when approaching a shoreline, you may hear

frogs leaping into the water with loud splashes and “eep!” cries; these are

juvenile Bullfrogs, avoiding you as a potential predator. Locals often make a

concentrated effort to eradicate them, which involves going out on the water

at night with headlamps to stun the frogs, and then bashing their heads in.

 

A sunrise canoe trip on Beaver Lake once resulted in us scooping up a huge

tadpole on our paddle. Bullfrogs spend one or sometimes two years in the

tadpole stage, compared to just a few months for many other frog species,

and they are large – up to 15 cm long!

 

Fast forward to last year in our new home in Yellow Point, the day we found

another Bullfrog in our fish pond. We captured it in a net, just at the time our neighbour, a marine biologist, and his three little girls walked by. He

grabbed the frog by its hind legs and smashed its head against a rock. The

three little girls shrieked as did I! The next day he thanked us for his dinner

of frogs legs.

 

By now you may be feeling sorry for the Bullfrog, but they are causing

havoc in the wild. They were introduced to B.C. in the 1930’s and 1940’s for

their meaty legs by wannabe frog farmers. I guess Canadians did not latch

on to this culinary delight, so the frogs were released into the wild. They

have now spread through much of the Lower Mainland and southern

Vancouver Island, and have also been found in the South Okanagan.

 

Seniors home care, care facilities,RV parks B &B, Churches, Brew pubs, craft breweries, vineyards, distilleries, Pets BC. Seniors 101, Island Voices promoting the products and services available for seniors on Vancouver Island. Seniors 101 lifeline. Snowbirds. Employment. Politics. Vancouver Island Now. Island woman magazine. Around the Island, Newsletters.Normally I find frogs rather cute, but the sight of this one gives me the

shivers.

 

 

 

 

Farmers markets Blog, Restaurants, Crafts, Hobbies, Recipes, Pets, Shop on-line. Women's Fashions, Woman to Woman.  Island Woman magazine, inspiring the women of Vancouver Island, BC.Carolyn Herriot is author of The Zero Mile Diet and The Zero Mile Diet Cookbook Available at your local bookstore. She grows IncrEdibles! in Yellow Point. www.incredibles.vision

 

 

 

 

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3 Comments

  1. Carolyn: I’d rather read about a more humane way of dealing with this problem. Why is it alright to freeze a living thing to death and smash it’s head on a rock? Oh, I know. It’s only a frog.

  2. Enjoyed the Bullfrog tale. I know they are predators here in BC and unwelcome in our waters, but I do have a soft spot for the critters from my Ontario days (where bullfrogs are native) when I would lie abed in our cabin listening to their ‘Arr-rump’ in the evenings. I spent many a day or got many a soaking in the shallows around our island when I tried, (always unsuccessfully) to catch one!

  3. Hi Carolyn, I loved this. I am aware of these critters taking over our ponds. There should be a critter catching group that tells people how to catch them, or catches them, themselves. Sounds like a project for teenage boys. lol They are extremely invasive and get very large. barb

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