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”.
“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.
Normally I find frogs rather cute, but the sight of this one gives me the
shivers.
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
See all articles by Carolyn Herriot
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.
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!
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