Frogs

I was weeding a flowerbed in my front yard a couple of years ago, and was working on some especially thick groundcover that had been infested with grass. As I was working, I was shocked when a frog suddenly jumped out of the flowerbed where I was working. Frogs are not a common sight in dry Utah, but this frog was most especially strange. It was black with green spots, and a red underbelly. It had the brightest colors I had ever seen on a frog. Knowing that bright colors meant poison, and that some frogs seep poison through their skin, I wisely didn't touch it. I yelled for the family to come see, and we observed the frog for a long time.

We decided to look online to see what kind of frog it was. While we couldn't find anything with the EXACT coloring, we found enough similarities to conclude that we had either a Poison Dart Frog from South America, or an Asian Fire-Bellied Toad in our front yard. We must have had an escapee from a terrarium come visit us. Everyone I tell this story to says we should have tried to catch it, but hindsight is 20/20, and we just observed, and let it go its way. I'll make a note the next time a poison dart frog comes to our yard.