Frog Feeding Frenzy

Alert Gazette readers will recall this post wherein I described a gray tree frog of indeterminate chromosomal makeup suctioned onto the outside of one of our windows. Well, it was back last night on a different window — along with a second one on another window — and I noticed that it was busily devouring as many of the insects flying around it as it could catch. I decided to video this activity, and here’s a short clip of the action (be sure to watch until the end for an instant replay of an especially impressive capture):

Judging by the scary number of insects swarming to the light of my cell phone, we need about a thousand more of these frogs (although I’d be happy with bats, as well, and those are starting to appear in our neighborhood) to make a dent in the population.

I’m waiting on an answer from an insect identification Facebook group that I hope can tell me the species of the large insect “showcased” — a polite alternative to “scarfed down” — at the end of the video. I hope it was a mosquito. Regardless, I was a bit fascinated by the brief glimpse at the frog’s tongue. I’ve always envisioned that frogs employed the behavior illustrated by the gif over there at the right, and maybe some do have that long, prehensile tongue (I’ve watched chameleons capture prey from a long distance with their lengthy lenguas), but this frog’s tongue appears to be a wide, short, and flat organ…and obviously sticky.

It’s kinda cool that these arboreal amphibians have decided that our living room windows are the equivalent of a Golden Corral. The only downside is the presence of the inevitable end result of the digestive process, if you get my drift.

I do feel obligated by certain other occupants of Casa Fire Ant to explain that our windows are really not always as dirty as they look in the video. We recently had the exterior of our house repainted, and the painters pressure washed all the surfaces that were to be painted. They did an excellent job of cleaning those surfaces, but our windows were collateral damage, and the window cleaning crew isn’t arriving until tomorrow.