Monday, February 20, 2012

Cuban Tree Frog Febuary 2012

On 2/17/2012 I caught this 4 inch female Cuban Tree Frog right in the middle of the day. It was sitting on a metal fence and I scooped it into a jar. I'm experimenting with it to see what it will eat. I know it specilizes in killing Florida's native Tree Frogs, but will it eat anything else?

Update:
I have witnessed it eagerly eat 2 large cockroaches and 10 or so live carpenter ants and several Cuban Anole lizards. A friend is going to give me a couple small Cuban Tree frogs and we are going to see if this large one will eat its own species. I'm not going to feed it a native tree frog, we already know from disected frogs that native tree frogs were found in their stomachs.

Update:
I took this Cuban Tree Frog to a Florida Native Plant Societ meeting. When the president of the club held up the container it was in everyone went "BOOOOOO! Cuban Tree Frog BOOOOOO!" Several people had never seen one up close, but everyone know what it was by name.

Update
I took this Frog to the Central Florida Herpetological meeting and no one there had seen one so big. But they did comfirm it was a Cuban Tree Frog.

Update:
I've had this big female Cuban Tree Frog for seven months now. In that time I've terminated 9 male Cuban Tree Frogs by freezing them. I've got this female trained to eat out of my hand. She has eaten live mice, blocks of scrambled eggs, a small dead bird, sliced turkey and a small live Green House Frog.

Will they eat their own species?
 She would not eat her own species that were living in the cage with her. I thought that since she eats only what I hand to her that I should hand feed her a small Cuban Tree Frog. But when I tried this, rather than aggresively attack she turned away and made a sour face. I tried again and she retreated to hide under water.

Indo Pacific Gecko Feb 2012


The other night I caught this Indo Pacific Gecko off the foundation of my house. I caught it by just grabbing it with my hand. It is now living in a fish tank in my house, I'll be showing it around to some environmental groups, then feeding it to my pet snapping turtle.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

A few days off 2011-2012

Over winter class break I did some exoitc hunting.

16 Anolis sagrei
11 Chinese Tallow Trees
215 Cesar Weed Plants
1 patch of Japanese Climing Fern

I attened a Florida Native Plant society meeting last night. They have got me on a new habit of planting native plants after I pull out the exotic ones.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

12/11/11 Native Spider Lilly Plants and invasive Water Hyacinths

I took a walk out into the swamp I live on and planted 14 native Spider Lilly Plants. I also pulled 14 Water Hyacinths from shore.

It felt good to put as many native into the swamp as exotics I pulled out. I don't have any Spider Lillies around my house but I see big patches of them down stream from me.

11/16/11 Cuban Anoles

Today I caught 2 Cuban Anoles at Back to Nature and 2 more at home. I also found one tiny Cesar Weed at home. All Cuban Anoles were Florida Snapping Turtle food.

11/13/11 Tallow, Taro and Air Potatoes

Today I led a University of Central Florida Eco-Advocates and Eco-Action team to fight the exotics in Jay Blanchard Park in Orlando. We took out 90 Taro plants, 2 big Chinese Tallow Trees adn 1 Air Potatoe vine. We took out some litter also.

Although we worked hard today I have just scratched the surface of the invasion in this park. The best park of today was having everyone grab the base of this one Chinese Tallow tree at the same time. We piled upon eachother and all together ripped that invasive SOB right out of the ground roots and all.

11/12/11 Cuban Anoles and Cesar Weeds

While visiting Back to Nature Wildlife Refuge I took out 2 Cuban Anoles (Anolis sagrei) and 20 Cesar Weeds. I got another sagrei at my house when I got home.