I moved house to Leith 14 months ago and this is our second intruder
He sneaks around at night
When I went down to breakfast, I could see him from the window.
Those slightly glazed conker brown eyes, golden skin, spots, and bandy legs straddling the garden hose like Cher on her If I Could Turn Back Time canon. Ah, my prince, Kermit the frog.
When I spotted this creature, I hadn’t known what I’d write about for my column, and his appearance was surely attention-seeking. I’m sorry, but he made me do this.
This frog-of-very-little-brain seemed to be heading to our back door. He had forgotten that he actually lives in what is an old cludgie, towards the bottom of the garden. He’ll probably be embarrassed about me telling you about that.
When we first discovered him there, we were worried that a frog should be near a body of water, and I thought about taking him to Pilrig Park, even though there’s a heronry there.
However, the world wet web tells me to leave him alone. He’ll come out and hunt for slugs and other revoltingly gelatinous snacks at night, then hop back.
I don’t know how he ended up here, but it seems that the pet distribution system has gone to work again. They did not present me with the Italian greyhound of my dreams.
That’s probably my own fault. It’s karma. I blame the fact that when an Edinburgh Cat and Dog Home charity fundraising person came knocking on my door recently, their opening line was “Do you like cats and dogs?” and I thought it’d be funny to say “no”. They were not particularly amused, and told me that all my neighbours loved them and had indeed donated to the charity.
Or, it could be because the tadpoles I looked after, when I was about seven years old, died because I left them in a bowl of water in the garden and the liquid evaporated in the sun. When I found them, they were like Coco Pops with crispy tails.
Now, fate is punishing me with less cuddly pet choices.
Instead, a few months ago, we got a mouse - now humanely released - a handful of giant house spiders, and, finally, a puddock.
We plan to buy him a lead and a tartan jacket, and take him for walkies around Leith Links. I hope he’s a lap frog, because we’re going to be having plenty of cuddle time on the sofa.
Even though it’s just an old loo, he has a nice home. The cludgie/shed, with its ancient toilet roll holder dangling redundantly against the door, has last year’s Christmas tree base propped against its wall. This provides a cosy lean-to shelter. However, sometimes, he’ll venture out from under there, and likes to stand imperiously on the base of the garden broom, as if he’s the Queen Victoria statue on the Kirkgate and that’s his stone plinth.
My husband has added to his enrichment with a saucer of water. This is what we call froggie’s hot tub, though it's more like a cold plunge. My other half has been worrying about climate change and has decided, since we have zero control over the myriad of ways that billionaires are wrecking the planet, that all he can do is be kind to our own wildlife.
Thus, froggie is loved more than his tiny brain knows, as are the squirrels, despite their digging and fighting, and that flamin’ mouse, who has a new life now and probably never thinks about his happy times at our house.
Whenever we have to do any gardening that involves leaving the cludgie/shed door open, our watery pet will hop off for a while. If we check back in, a few hours later, he’ll be back, huffing in his hot tub. Frogs definitely huff. He’s raging.
On every sixth check or so, there will be two frogs. Froggie has been a courtin’. I don’t know who his lover is, but we shall call her Miss Piggy.
Weirdly, I have noticed that their eyes are always open. I wondered about that and had another dip into the world wet web. It turns out that frogs don’t have eyelids, which is a shame for them. Thus they can’t wink at anyone, or wear mascara, and they only sleep lightly, to stay alert to potential predators, like the seagulls who swoop over our garden.
Anyway, they seem unperturbed when we check on them. Their eyes may not be closed but they must be dreaming about slugs, bluebottles, moss and the dank Stygian places that are like the Maldives to them.
Anyway, frogs have always been a weird one for me. I’m not scared of spiders, or snakes, but I can feel my panicked amygdala occasionally tingling when I see a puddock. Eventually, I realised that the fear has nothing to do with the amphibian itself, but emanates from the idea of accidentally treading on one and the unpleasant squelching, like standing on a banana, that might be involved. I shared this with a friend, who told me that she lived near a golf course when she was a kid, and there were lots of frogs and toads on it. Sometimes, the local children would go onto it after dark and one of them would accidentally stand on a lost golf glove, and start screaming that they’d squashed a frog.
Anyway, it feels safer when our wild pet is safely ensconced in his cludgie. No seagulls, no stomping.
Soon, it will be time for him to hibernate and we’ll leave him to it. However, when he wakes up, he can rest assured that he will have a fresh hot tub to huff in.
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