Bullfrog at Alton Jones

This morning, I was out early, en route to the University of Rhode Island's W. Alton Jones campus in West Greenwich. For the past few years, I've been blessed by being asked to work with URI's environmental educators to impart some of my enthusiasm and teaching techniques; in return, I get to walk with a fine group of naturalists and do what I can to help them raise the environmental awareness of school kids throughout the state. This trip, they were interested in learning more about vernal pool ecology, and at a wetland I've come to know pretty well, we found this elder statesman who had fairly recently emerged from hibernation in the mud. Bull frogs are not, as one of the teachers thought, invasive species in our area—they're New England natives—but they can be problematic, since the frogs eat just about any swallowable animal in their paths, from salamander larvae and frog tadpoles to every kind of insect imaginable. You really don't want these predators to discover your vernal pool in the woods. Even so, I couldn't bring myself to turning the table on the amphibian and turning it into frog's legs. I guess I'm getting soft in my dotage.