about last night

Josh Ritter put on a hell of a concert at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. The newly redone performance area is well laid out, and the roses are a stunning backdrop. We missed most of Justin Earle's opening set, unfortunately, but the couple songs we heard were as good as you'd expect.

The sun was just going down as Ritter and the band took the stage. They opened with a track I didn't recognized and went on to play a solid two-hour set that mixed up new songs with a nice spread of tracks from his first three albums. Their energy was spot-on, and even when he flubbed a line late in the show, he just laughed it off. I've said many times over that what I most look for in a good show is the energy and engagement with the crowd, and he had both in spades.

Among the setting-related highlights was this little guy. Frogs were all over the place, and Ritter joked about making breaks in the songs for them to sing along. Buttercup found this one near the pavilion. He seemed pretty happy in her hands and was safely returned to his home before we left.

The return of Leapy

Night 1
I picked up crickets at Fin and Feather in the hopes that new food would lure Leapy back. I put a few crickets in the aquarium and put the rest in the cricket keeper, which sits on the dresser next to the aquarium. The next morning, the cricket keeper was on the floor. I had visions of Leapy lurking somewhere around the dresser, waiting for me to turn off the IKEA seahorse light, and then climbing back up to solve the puzzle of getting crickets. She's crafty, this frog.

Night 2
I stopped in the room to check on Banana before I went to sleep--far too late, as usual. At a glance at the floor, I saw a hunched lump that did not belong with the rest of the toys. She struggled a bit when I picked her up and tried to climb my arm rather than go back in the aquarium. Nonetheless, she did go back, and when Banana woke up this morning, she was ecstatic. Leapy was also quite tame and did not try to escape. Still, the screen atop her aquarium will remain weighted.

UPDATE...
Never forget to put the weights atop the screen. The frog will escape again. And she has. Oy.

She's crafty, that frog.

This morning, Banana came to me and said that Leapy wasn't in her cage. I was incredulous at first, particularly since the kid has developed a penchant for saying things like "Fooled you" lately. When she did, in fact, show me Leapy's aquarium, it was clear that there was no frog. Not in the waterfall. Not in the corner. Not in the nooks of her log. There was no frog.

Upon further investigation, there was a trace of her next to the cricket cage--a frog pellet, if you will. Clearly she had somehow pushed the screen up enough to get out, landed near the cricket keeper and moved on somewhere else. We continued to look for her, but turned nothing up. I'm going to buy crickets this afternoon in the hopes that a new supply will bring her back to the cricket cage.

Banana has already begun to move on. If Leapy doesn't come back, she wants a pet that won't try to escape. I'm pretty sure it hasn't occurred to her yet that a disappeared Leapy means an animal hiding somewhere in the house. Will we find her by smell if the crickets don't work, or will we wake one morning to find her hugging a corner wall?

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a random return while we're both away today.

Leapy

So the treefrog has been hanging out with Banana a great deal lately. She seems to like it--the frog, that is. Yesterday, when I came in the room she looked up from her perch on Banana's arm and proceeded to climb towards me. Then she climbed on my arm and hunkered down. It was odd and endearing.

Apparently Leapy has decided that she is part of the family.

tree frogs

This is Leapy. She is a remarkably sociable tree frog.



She is perfectly content to hang out on Banana's arm, climb in the dollhouse, and say hello to visitors. She is not currently allowed in eating areas, but she spent a brief time in the kitchen yesterday watching the final preparations of a late dinner. (Summer seems to be the time for slipping bedtimes and later-than-usual meals.) Leapy likes to sit on or in her log, likes to cling to the tank near the light where she turns a bright shade of green, and spends part of her evenings sitting in the waterfall basin. She is not as voracious as the praying mantis in a nearby cage, but she does take care of crickets pretty handily. I'm sure she would like a tank-mate, but I'm not ready to take that step yet.

frogs and more frogs

This is the most recent incarnation of Hopper. Hopper 7, the sequel you might call him.

He (?) was one of the smaller bullfrogs Banana caught at Little Tunk, and one of two this afternoon. He (?) was quite an amiable little bullfrog, and Banana insisted that he liked her. Even as he tried to hop away a few times. After a while, I insisted that he needed to be returned to his home in the reeds. She was slow about it, and I got a little more frustrated than I wanted to be.

This age is a lot of fun--and one can only hope that the various creatures see their experiences as adventures. Banana seems much more aware of the world around her, asking lots of questions about things around the house and suddenly saying "whee" as we go over little hills in the car. But for all those fun moments, there are all the little pains in the neck like when she repeatedly tried to negotiate for more time with the frog.

So this is the battle: No versus But.