| Guess what? I'm a boy frog! For the longest time I wasn't
sure, since it's really hard to tell, but then I was hopping through some web
sites and saw an article saying that only the male frogs make noises. I make
sort of an "URK!" sound in the evenings when I hear the TV playing or
people talking. It sounds sort of like a cross between a dog barking and a
parrot squawking. Cool, huh? JUST ASK MUFFIN:
Do Horned Frogs make good pets? Hey, of course we do! Just remember that we don't go in for that mushy
stuff. No hugging, no kissing. You shouldn't handle us with bare hands, either, because
the oil from your hands can damage our skin. We like to sit. And eat. And eat, and sit.
What a life!
What do you eat? Um,
what don't I eat? Eating is my main goal in life. I'll eat crickets and bugs when I'm
small, and when I'm big I'll eat goldfish and mice. Yum! Just don't feed me anything
bigger than half my size, because I'm really enthusiastic and I'll try to eat it anyway.
In fact, if I bite you it's not cause I'm mean, it's because your fingers look just like
little pink baby mice... Don't put any other frogs in with me, or I'll eat them too!
(By the way, I don't always have goldfish around. I'm happy to eat a nice thumb-sized
chunk of raw chicken dipped in Rept-o-cal vitamins, if you'll just wave it around in front
of me with a blunt pair of pliers or kitchen tongs.)
Do you swim?
Well, I can swim, but I prefer to sit. And eat. In my natural habitat, I snuggle
down into the leaves on the forest floor and wait for an unsuspecting bug or rodent - or
even another frog - to walk by. Then I leap out and snarf it down - yum! So, you see, I'm
not naturally a deep-water frog. I like to sit in a puddle that comes just up to my
middle, or burrow into wet leaves or dirt.
How big will you get?
Enormously, impressively, delightfully large! I'm a fast grower. When I hatched from my
egg, I went from a tadpole to a frog in just two weeks. In five months, I'll be
4 to 6 inches
across! I really mean "across", because I'm about as wide as I am long. I can
weigh up to one pound. Males are smaller than females.
Where are you from?
Me? I'm from the pet store! My relatives, though, still live in the rainforests of
northern Argentina, Uruguay, Columbia, and part of Brazil.
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