I got an unexpected surprised while fiddling around with the rocks I have lining the beds in my garden (a work in progress). Here's what I saw when I flipped over a large one on the corner.
I found a very cold Leopard Frog that had tunneled under the rock. I didn't think I was close enough to any bodies of water to have frogs in my yard. No response when poked at, so I'm a little worried it might be dead, but it could just be hibernating. Obviously that was its idea when it dug itself under the rock. I just hope it didn't end up freezing to death during our last hard freeze. Daniel suggested we could bring it inside and try warming it up and see if it came back to life, but I thought it might be best to let sleeping frogs lie. I don't know about frogs, but I've heard about how waking up other hibernating animals can do them harm, so we ended up just carefully putting the rock back.
This may also explain where my toads go when they aren't lounging on the porch. They might have holes under other rocks in the garden. I'd better remember to be careful when lifting up rocks to make sure I don't squish any.
After things warm up, I'm going to check under the rock again to see if the frog made it. Hopefully I'll find an empty hole where the frog used to be before it came out of hibernation safely and hopped away.
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