Get ready for Save The Frogs Day!

I am full of froggy excitement in telling you about Save The Frogs Day on April 30^th ! Save The Frogs Day is the world's largest day of amphibian education and conservation action and is organized by our fantastic frog-loving pals at SAVE THE FROGS. Urgent action is needed as we frogs face so many threats. A lot of you may take us for granted, but believe me, we enrich your lives in more ways than you can imagine.

Thanks to the Save The Frogs organization, scientists and volunteers have held over 1,600 educational events in 60 countries to educate people about the plight of us friendly frogs and teach humans about ways to protect amphibians. Their website is full of wonderful facts that show people how important we frogs and our amphibian relatives are for the environment – and basically, just how general cool we are. Why wouldn’t you want to do more to keep us around?

I highly recommend a visit to their fantastic gift shop. My family have been going crazy over the wonderful presents I’ve given them from there. My Uncle Krustnut, who is a musician, says that the SAVE THE FROGS! Guitar Picks are the best he’s ever used and help him put an extra bit of twang into his songs. Ever since I bought him a pack of them, he’s been rocking out the pond every Friday night!

Always rely on frogs if you want to predict the weather

Humans seem to be obsessed about the weather. In England, it is customary to discuss what the weather is going to be like at every opportunity – I’m not sure why since everyone knows that it will rain anyway. For an English frog that’s probably pretty useful that it rains as then their lovely skin won’t dry out. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be too pleased if it actually started to rain frogs. Thankfully, I’ve never been caught up in such a bizarre and uncomfortable situation, but apparently there have been a number of such incidents recorded through history. As there are very few eye witness accounts, and since these phenomena have been documented by humans (with their tendency to exaggerate), who knows how reliable they are?

Anyway, I digress. Today, I wanted to talk about predicting the weather, which has turned into a multimillion dollar business. There’s a whole human science to the way it’s done involving fancy, high tech meteorological analyses and lots of complicated-sounding words and technical terms I can’t get my head round. Yet, we frogs have known about the weather for centuries and we’ve never had to rely on junk and nonsense like you.

Watch how well I swim compared to you!

Some humans guessed that we had some idea about what was going on but they had no idea about how to harness our secret skills. For example, in some countries, they would shove a frog in a jar filled with some water and insert a little ladder. These naïve humans decided that if the weather was going to get better then the frog would climb the ladder, whereas if it was going to rain the frog would go back down the ladder. Uh, hello? Who on earth came up with that crazy idea? Do you really think we climb ladders in the “wild”? I bet my ancestors had all sorts of fun fooling those crazy people who forced them into those jars. I’d have taken great pleasure in climbing up that ladder and watching you get drenched in a sudden downpour.

The real way to understand the weather is to simply watch us – yes that’s right – watch us and show us some respect, rather than squeezing us into uncomfortable glass containers and making us do stupid things. If we’re out and about, it probably means something exciting is about to happen…so get out there and learn something from us.

What frogs think of humans

Quit staring at me!

Long ago, I had to live in a zoo – I think that’s what it was called – in a kind of weird glass enclosure with fake scenery (pretty cheap quality too if you ask me) and poor artificial lighting (did anyone ever ask me if I wanted it to be so dark?). It was a pretty easy life I suppose, but very boring. What used to irritate me more than anything else was the way people used to come up to the glass to stare at me and my fellow inhabitants and talk about us as if we couldn’t hear them. I didn’t mind the children so much as they were just curious, but the adults used to talk about us as if we were idiots. “Look at that fat frog over there” or “Doesn’t that big frog look stupid” or “Why doesn’t he move when I hit the glass?” would be the sort of annoying comments I’d get.

Well did you ever think what I thought of you and your gawking companions? Thanks to this blog I can now put the record straight and tell you how I perceive humans (yes I too can use fancy words).

Slow down and have some fun

Rush, rush, rush and moan, moan, moan – that’s all humans seem to do. Yes, so many of you (with some exceptions) look and sound bizarre to us frogs. You run around, freaking out at the slightest issue (or other people) and then complain about how miserable your lives are. So if you’re not happy why are you rushing to do things that don’t actually cheer you up?

And what’s this obsession with electronic machines and gadgets? People spend their lives fiddling about with devices and making their eyesight worse by staring at tiny screens. Sometimes, this strange activity is supposedly to communicate with other humans. Can’t you just meet your friends and talk directly to them? And what’s this silly craze for playing games? The one that drives me really mad is that Candy Crush game. Do you realize how stupid you look glaring at those colored shapes moving around and the inane grins on your faces as you do it? What’s so exciting about moving onto another level of this ridiculous activity? 

My advice to you is to just sit back, preferably in a shallow puddle of stagnant water, let out a large croak and watch life go by at its own pace...

Welcome to the world's first blog by a frog!

Yes don't worry, you read the title correctly! Frog philosophy is here to bring happiness to the world!

Throughout the course of history
Frogs have been considered a mystery
Yet hidden away, covered in mud and slime
They have witnessed the greatest events of time
So here is the world's first dedicated blog
To present life from the perspective of a frog
Via news, views, random thoughts and croaking
May you find the posts both fun and thought-provoking