Meet Fernando our American Green Tree Frog!

Meet Fernando, our green tree frog!

While swimming in our pool this week, Madison and I made a fantastic discovery. There was a tree frog hanging out on the side of the pool. We proceeded to watch it during the course of our swim as it made its way to a nearby umbrella pole. It leaped with great precision.

Green Tree Frog

We continued to watch the little green frog move about, and we were quite astounded when he made a downward leap towards an extension cord coming off our back patio that was almost  6 foot. It was absolutely amazing how it had such accurate precision. Soon the frog was near the patio and wedged itself into a very small crevice as though it was hiding.


That began our fascination with Fernando. When we originally found him, he looked something like this. (Note, this is a web image, I did not actually take any photos of the frog in the beginning.)

This began a bit of a science quest. We decided to catch the little frog and see if we could make it a descent habitat.




Madison and I did some research to find out exactly what kind of frog it was,  the various things this frog would need: air, food, water and plants. We determined that it was an American Tree Frog and its scientific name was Hyla cinerea. We also tried to tell what sex the frog was, we determined by the size of it's ears that it was likely a female. After assembling the various items to create a new habitat, this is how it looked.

The next step wold be collecting bugs for it to eat. The first day, Madison could catch the bugs anyway possible. It took a while, but she finally managed to scrape up a few ants.

The next day, I asked her if she could figure out a better way to catch the bugs. After some research on line, we decided to catch some bugs using a 2 liter bottle bug trap. Pictured below.

2 Liter Bug Trap

The bug trap worked great, but the bait we put in it was a slice of orange. This only attracted ants. We really wanted some crickets. This led to more research. We determined that we needed to change our bait. 

Crickets are omnivorous, so they eat both plants and meat,  so we tried pepperoni. It worked! After only a few ours we had a happy little cricket to feed Fernando. 

We noticed that the pepperoni was looking a little gross, we decided to try peanut butter. It worked too! 

We were well on our way to providing a stable meal for our new pet! 

After 5 days of observing our frog, we noticed that our frog change color! Fernando was now a very dark shade of green. I knew that frogs could change color, but I didn't realize that she would change so dramatically! We needed to do more research! After digging around the internet, we came to two conclusions; the frog was either stressed, or it was changing to blend with its surroundings.

Day 5 - Fernando the Frog

After some deliberation, we decided that if we were stressing the frog, it would not be worth keeping it. We still didn't want to let the frog go, but instead we would let Fernando decide. We removed the lid, and waited patiently for the frog to make its choice. After a few hours, we finally found that Fernando wanted her freedom.