Subject: Subject: [Tweeters] fried bullfrog legs taste great!!!
Date: Aug 14 08:15:14 2006
From: Susan Anderegg - susananderegg at hotmail.com


HI Tweets

Eastern Bullfrogs are not native, and I do believe that with a fishing license you can catch as many as you want. Many years ago while working as a volunteer with the Western Pond Turtle recovery project down in the Columbia Gorge one of my duties was destruction of bullfrog egg masses (about 10,000 eggs per mass) as well as killing any adult frogs we caught in the turtle traps. The traps were used to capture turtles so we could affix radio transmitters to the females and locate their nests to protect the young turtles. Because bullfrogs were thought to be consuming all the young turtles, who are about the size of a quarter and a handy meal for a large voracious bullfrog, we worked hard to keep their population down. More effective though was putting the young turtles in a "head start" program at the zoo for a year. Then they were too big for the bullfrogs to eat.

Bullfrog tadpoles take two years before metamorphasising into adults, so if a pond or wetland dries out they die. Can probably catch adults on a fishing pole with bait dangled in front of their faces. Their "food" needs to be moving or they can't see it. I've seen photos in an old National Geographic article where they were caught like that.

a cautionary word, though, watch that you don't catch red-legged frogs, our native Rana that is becoming rarer, partly because of the eastern bullfrog that eats them, too. (the eastern bullfrog is another Rana, so they look similar).

happy bullfrogging and enjoy those frog legs!

Susan
susananderegg at hotmail.com


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