St. Nicholas/Volume 32/Number 4/Nature and Science/Frog
Various Attitudes and Antics of the Little Frog Traveler
The Little Frog Traveler.
At the Children’s Museum in Brooklyn there is a little stranger whose queer history makes him especially interesting.
He was found one day at Canarsie Bay, Long Island, in the coal-bunker of a boat which came from the South. He is a little Southerner, and is never found at home north of Virginia. By chance he had found his way on board the vessel, and traveled as a stowaway. A man picked him up, and, noting his beauty, washed the coal-dust out of his eyes and gave him to his grandson. The little boy, thinking that other children might like to see} him, brought him to the museum.
When he said he had a frog, the lady in charge thought it was a common kind, so she said she did not care for it, as there was no room. However, one of the attendants told him to put the frog in a case where there were three bullfrogs. She knew what the boy did not, that big frogs cat small frogs.
Now it would have been sad if our little wanderer had been devoured by these monsters, but he had no such intention. He hopped out of reach, up the glass, and over the top. The little boy called the attendant, and said: “He won't stay in!”
At once she suspected that this was no common frog, as they cannot crawl up glass, and she thought it was a little Northern tree-frog. What was her surprise, therefore, to find, upon noticing it more carefully, that it was a beautiful pea-green frog, with slender legs, beautiful gold-veined eyes, and golden-light stripes down each side and along the outer seam of his “coat sleeves” and “trouser legs.”
He was named “Billy Green Springer,” for that was what the boy called him; and, besides, he was green, and could spring prodigious distances, and could cling to whatever spot he touched, even on the window-pane.
He sits all day on the inside of his glass jar, with his body pressed close against it. He is a wonderful little hunter, too; for if a fly is put into the jar, he moves slowly toward it, and, when within two inches or about the length of his own body, his head shoots forward and his long tongue comes out so quickly that one cannot see it, and Mr. Fly has gone to the Department of the Interior,
This little stranger is called Hyla Carolinensis, and he is first cousin to our little gray tree-frog, who is Hyda versicolor. Walter King Stone
The Hyda versicolor is one of the “spring peepers” that usually begin to call in early March. It is commonly called the tree-toad, although it is really a frog and not a toad. Try placing one on different-colored materials.