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Frogs in the toilet - the realities of living in the bush

Here's a recycled post from 2011, its funny to reflect on the relative luxuries of our house at Eight Acres, as we prepare to move to our secondhand house at Cheslyn Rise... we also have frogs in the toilet there!

One of the unfortunate realities of "living in the bush" is finding frogs in your toilet.  Our last house was an old Queenslander, which was obviously built prior to the invention of indoor toilets.  A toilet had been added in the 80s when the house was moved, it must have been a cheap option to put the toilet out on the porch, which was not pleasant on cold nights, a quick dash through the back door and into the loo, brrrr!  Anyway, being an outside toilet, with the door frequently left open, it was not surprising to find a frog or two peering up at you when you lifted the lid. My husband didn't mind just weeing on them, however I didn't fancy the idea of sitting down with the frog underneath me and likely to jump up at any time.  I ended up fishing them out of the bowl more often than not.  I didn't mind the inconvenience because the frogs are so lovely.  How could you be angry with such a beautiful creature? Apart from being completely harmless, they also eat the bugs that swarm around our windows in summer.

Our new house in Nanango has an inside toilet (among other luxuries, such as a bath and fly screens on every window!).  You would think that would have been the end of the frogs in the toilet, but strangely we also found them in that toilet too!  I hate to think where they were coming from, most likely from the spetic tank.  Again, my husband was happy to wee on them, so I was left to fish them out and run through the house, out the door and chuck them over the verandah (due to the fly screens, I couldn't just put them out the window).  I had to run because frogs tend to wee on you when you pick them up, possibly revenge, but I've read somewhere that this is to counter the acid on our skin.  Anyway, if the toilet lid was left up, we would often find them hopping around the bathroom, and then the chase was on.  Luckily the frogs seem to have given up on their plot to infiltrate our house and we haven't had any in the toilet for ages.

A beautiful big green frog that was living in our laundry sink.
After rain, all you can hear around our house is frogs.  They are surprisingly loud, especially if one or two find their way into a pipe and create an echo.  I love the noise because it means that they eating bugs for me.  In summer I find them everywhere in the garden, they peep out from any cool dark spot.  There was even one in my gumboot the other day!  Apart from the beautiful green frogs, we also have some exquisite tiny brown frogs, some with an almost bronze sheen.  There are a couple living in my compost and some that live on the manure floating in my weed/manure tea drum.  I guess they are eating the bugs there too, so they're welcome to live there and I love to see them when I open the lid.  I wish I had a better camera to share the brown frogs with you as well.

Have you ever found anything strange in your toilet?  Do you just love green frogs too?


Comments

  1. Now that is a gorgeous froggie photo! I am a fan of the frog. We have them near our dam on our property and on those warm summer nights when there is no breeze, their wooing songs drift up to the house.

    I like to think that having frogs means that you are stepping lightly on the land.

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  2. one night I shifted either three frogs or one frog three times, he kept coming up from the toilet, (I did keep putting him back in there) in the end I put him outside
    sometimes you have to tread carefully when you first come out of a morning lol
    CC

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  3. We have lots of frogs in the bog out back - the spring peepers and bullfrogs are really loud this time of year. But I can't say I've ever found one in the toilet!

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  4. Very cute pic. The frogs are just looking for a moist habitat, once you live there and provide a few wet pot plant saucers or plant pots with water wells etc around the verandah or nearby yard they probably will be happy to stay outside.
    My parents lived on the beach near Bundaberg and a python was found curled up on the toilet one night, lucky it was dad found it, mum would have been half asleep and just sat down.

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  5. Oh, frogs are one of my favourite animals, Liz. Where I grew up in Far North Qld, frogs in the toilet were a common "surprise". Where we currently live, we have rarely seen them which is quite sad. Frogs are viewed as one of nature's environmental barometers, indicators for how our Earth is doing. If you've got frogs at your place, offering them a haven to live and breed, that's a wonderful thing. Meg:)

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  6. Liz, there were frogs in the toilets where my grandchildren go to school in the the Outback and they were so scared of them they would hang on all day and not use the toilet.

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  7. We have Wallum froglets live in our toilet cistern. They are crazy loud, so much louder than tree frogs. You wouldn't think so because of their tiny size. Unfortunately there are times when I move the froglets outside the butcher birds think I am providing a snack and fly in and eat the froglets. Oh well I suppose it is all a part of the web of life.

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