It has been a long time since I played the old Frogger game, where you have to get a little frog across a street and a river to go to the other side. I never really liked the game, because i would always get smushed by a big semi or die in the who-knows-what infested water.Even though frogs in real life do face dangerous encounters with humans and nature itself, it definitly takes many forms they are rarely the ones depicted in the Frogger video game.
During this last summer, me and my neighbor would often go out fishing. Since I had recently moved to my new house, and I was only an ameteur fisherman, I often got instruction from him. Of all of the bait he used to catch big fish like bass, he learned that leapord frogs work the best. Often we spent more time hunting frogs than actually catching fish. Sometimes we would bait the wee anphibian so we could catch the hulking bull frogs that seemed to eat anything that moved and happened to be smaller than them. Sometimes, we wouldn't catch any fish with the frogs, but the frog would still end up dead from being cast time after time out onto the water. With all the frogs in the nearby pond, I found it surprizing that there is a mass-killing of anphibians happening around the world. A fungus called chytrid has been infecting and seen growing on dead or dying frogs, toads, and salamanders. Some anphibians have bacteria growing on their skin that make them resistant to this fatal frog fungus, but most of our slippy, slimy pals don't have these bacteria(nationalgeographic.com). On a lighter note, many new species or 'extinct' species of anphibious animals have been found throughout the world, and an official global 'hunt' for more has been announced(nationalgeographic.com). I can't wait to see all the new animals discovered in the next coming year :-D
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