2024, animals, gardening, Nature, pets, Uncategorized

Herb

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Today’s post comes to us from Krista.

A couple of years ago, sometime in October, I decided it was time to bring my rosemary plant in. I was just kind of quickly grabbing plants – some would go down to the garage and a couple would stay in the house. I grabbed the rosemary plant and was stunned at what I saw. A fat, little tree frog snuggled up next to the stem of the rosemary plant!  

It was cold! I was surprised to see him there, hunkered down next to the plant in the soil. He was about the color of the soil, very well camouflaged. He was already in a state of torpor.  I knew a bit about the overwintering habits of tree frogs. I knew he needed to be in a wooded area, down beneath the thick leaf litter, maybe under a partially rotten log. I knew he needed to find that shelter himself and that he wouldn’t have time anymore, especially since he was already sleeping.  

I considered my rosemary plant. I knew life would be just fine for me if I didn’t keep it. I knew his life depended on it. But how could I use it to make him a safe place for the winter?  

I took the pot outside near my driveway. In the corner of the front wall of the house and the front steps there’s a terracotta sunny face and some prairie agates. This corner is sheltered and when the sun is out, it’s warm enough to melt ice even if the air temp is in the 20s. The corner also has an abundance of oak leaves.  

I pulled all the leaves and debris out of the corner, set the rosemary plant in the corner, and gently buried it with leaves. Then I placed another empty terracotta pot upside down over the top of all the leaves. The frog was still in the rosemary plant when I buried him, sleeping soundly. I placed the terracotta sun face in front of it to hold it all in place. He had air to breathe through the loose leaves, even though he would be breathing very infrequently. He was covered and had plenty of shelter. He would freeze almost completely in the winter and thaw out again in the spring.  

I asked my friend TeeJay if he thought the frog would make it. I also wanted to name it. TeeJay suggested “Herb” since it clearly loved the rosemary plant. He said he had no idea if it would make it or not, but the shelter I’d made might work. 

I thought about Herb all winter. I wondered if the shelter would protect him. It got awfully cold and we had a lot of snow. Sometime in April I took the shelter apart and looked in my dead rosemary plant. Herb was gone. He’d gotten out on his own.  

Disclaimer: I don’t know how to sex frogs. I have no idea if Herb is female or male. And the frog I saw sunning himself for several hours on my deck rail today may or may not be Herb. It might be one of Herb’s kids! There are lots of tree frogs here. I hear them calling a lot. I haven’t seen one since Herb left though. It was very nice to see Herb today! I know how silly it is but I thought maybe he was going to get too hot so I set him in my herb and flower garden. He can choose which plant he wants. For now, he’ll be catching lots of mosquitoes and flies. He’ll be getting fat for winter. I’m happy to have him here.  

Any unusual pets? Pet names?

58 thoughts on “Herb”

  2. I had a canary named frejoles once, all my animals names just come to me. I have no idea where the name frejoles and that wonderful songbird matched up but they did

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  4. The Birds are named Dart, Port, Arm and Art; Adapted from The Three Musketeers.
    A black cat was named Veloca after the velociraptors. She loved play biting and clawing.
    The cat, Toast, was named on the day we adopted the stray when she stole my toast out of my hand. ” You’re toast!”
    The dog Precious from Tolkien.

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    2. Every day she is just slightly better. Last night she got out a couple toys, but she only played for a few minutes–no stamina. But that is better than the “no interest at all” 3 days before that. She is a little less lethargic this morning. She insisted I lift her up on the bed for awhile. Her back end is still impaired due to joint stiffness and pain, so jumping up on anything is a problem.

      Vet’s office and info online makes it clear this will last awhile, but she has really been in tough shape. The loss of appetite is making it hard to get her meds into her.

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        1. Yes, the dog version of Lymes Disease. It is pretty awful. We keep her treated for ticks and fleas, but they can still bite and transmit the disease–they just die rather than hanging on.

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      2. Oh, that’s too bad. I’m sure you’re worried about her. She’s such a spunky girl. I hope she gets well soon.

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  6. I was given a kitten in a box many years ago. She was a tiny kitten in a refrigerator sized box. She was literally screaming. She was only about four weeks old and still wanted her mama. She nursed on my t-shirts for a few weeks. Soon she was running around the house like the wind. I named her Mariah.

    I’ve mentioned my Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Bailey. He was tri-colored; white, black, and caramel. The breed is Irish, so I named him Bailey for the Irish cream. He was my little turtle sundae and I loved him so much.

    Pippin’s name was actually Phillip. Lots of P’s and I’s. He was already familiar with his name because of the children in the foster parent’s home. I didn’t want to confuse him, and being a Tolkien fan, Pippin came naturally. He responded to it right away.

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    1. Some years ago—more than ten—Robin and I regularly walked the path around Lake Harriet in South Minneapolis. There we would encounter many dogs being walked and for some reason about half of them were named Bailey. I doubt that many random people had an infatuation with Irish Cream. I suspected there must have been a character on some popular television show named Bailey that triggered the Bailey infestation but never learned who.

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      1. I know. Lots of little girls were being named Bailey right about the same time and I wasn’t aware. I was in the vet office with him once and a little girl was sitting with her mom. She asked me what his name was. I told her. She burst into tears, sobbing into her mom’s shoulder. (Geez, what did I do?) Mom looked at me and said, “Her name is Bailey.” Wow! No offense intended!

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  7. We named Kyrill, our Cesky Terrier, after St
    Cyril, the evangelist to the Slavs and the inventor, along with St. Methodius, of the Cyrillic language.

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  10. It’s cool, Krista, that happened to know enough about tree frogs to figure out what to do! (That wouldn’t have happened here.) Had you read about them, or what?

    I think my favorite of our cat names was when I was in high school, and we got an orange tabby… not sure why we named him Claude, but it really fit.
    But my favorite was my friend Pete’s cat, down the street from me in El Granada CA. This cat wasn’t too bright, had one blue and one brown eye, and the eyes were crossed. Named him “Solid”.

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    1. I’ve just learned about tree frogs over the years because I hang around with biologists. It’s either a gray tree frog or a Cope’s gray tree frog. TeeJay asked me to get a recording of his calls and he can identify it from that. They’re done mating now, though, so they’re not calling. I’ve known that tree frogs can freeze almost completely for years, and that they don’t go into a pond or wetland to hibernate as leopard frogs do. They’re really woodland frogs.

      Once I identified a population of wood frogs that hadn’t been recorded there in the past. I did it again just this last spring. They have a distinct call.

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  12. We had a cat we named Scrappy. He was prone to unprovoked attacks that drew blood. Later we adopted a dog from the Humane Society that turned out to be a vicious biter. We stopped giving our pets “tough” names after that.

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  14. My father named animals, when he had the chance, after their appearance. My dog friend Boots was named Pepper when we got him, but my father called my him Boots for his four white boots. I have told the story of how, after we were married, he named a dog Sandy. Confusing indeed.
    Clyde

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  18. We had an English Springer Spaniel names Duchess – Duchy for short. Our neighbors had a liver colored English Springer named Spike. Later we got a medium sized poodle named Candy. She was unusual in that her fur was not very curly. We kept her ear fur long (wavy), and a topknot (which was also wavy, not curly) but the rest of her body fur was kept very short. Her tail was also long with straight hair at the end of it. People would ask us what breed of dog she was.

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  19. Pets? Just the fairly run-of-the-mill. Serial Omars (black and white mice), gerbils, dogs, cats.

    The mice, all named Omar; I had a massive crush on Omar Shariff in high school. Gerbils were Jorinda and Jorindel – famous fairy tales lovers, athough both gerbils were female. Most dogs/cats named after famous lovers (Scarlett, Sorcha, Tristan, Nimue, Guinevere). Baron came with his name at the age of four so I didn’t change it. Zorro also kept his shelter name. For our last Samoyed, he came with the name Angel, which YA and I just couldn’t do. We spent atn afternoon on the internet before hitting “Sorin” which immediately reminded me of Thorin Oakenshield from Lord of the Rings. Thorin he became. Rhiannon, my last Irish setter also came with her name – Rhiannon is a powerful Welsh goddess of horses – that was too good to change.

    I have also spent an absurd amount of time over the years picking out names for all the stuffed animals!

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  20. We had a double yellow headed Amazon parrot named Gizmo. He was reportedly twenty-three years old when we got him, and he was already named. He lived an additional twenty-three years with us.

    I had a chinchilla named Juanita Chinchilla, probably the most exotic pet I’ve had. I initially thought it was a male and named him Juan. When i woke up one morning and found two babies in the bottom of the cage, I changed the name to Juanita. I hadn’t realized that she was pregnant when I got her, and didn’t suspect it at any time prior to finding the two babies.

    We’re dog sitting a Portuguese water dog at the moment. Her name is Zara and she belongs to friend of ours. She’s three years old, and a very good dog. So calm and well behaved that Martha, our cat, isn’t the least bit concerned. She has visited us many times before, so she’s not freaked out because her human isn’t here, but I suspect she misses her six month old sister who is being taken care of by the breeder. She’s with us till Thursday.

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  21. After I had gone off to school, my folks got a parrot, whose name was Ahab. I never asked my dad or my mom why parrot was named Ahab. Unfortunately after a couple of years, my mom was working outside the house and Ahab was alone too much and developed some pretty obnoxious squawking habits. Luckily my folks were able to find him a home with a guy who was no longer working due to a disability — he and Ahab were very happy together.

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  22. i love the sound of tree frogs singing on warm summer nights. That reminds me, I’ve been hearing cicadas off and on for over a week now. They are making an early appearance – usually they come around in August.

    My cats were Franny, Georgia, Isabel, Jomo. Jory, and Sammy. Franny got her name from Franny Glass, a favorite literary character. Isabel was named for the street she was wandering on when a mail carrier picked her up as a small kitten. The others I din’t have a really clear reason for choosing a particular name. Jomo and Jory were siblings, so similar names seemed appropriate.

    Neigborhood dogs currently include Bella, Figgy, Dewey, Molly, Cora, Clover, Laddie, Lexie, and Sebastian.

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  23. The cats I (or my folks) had over the years were named: Katten, Claude, Fletcher, Squeaky, Midnight, Olga (for the gymnast O. Korbut), Ollie, Bambi, Socks, Momcat, Slush (short for Slushball, which evolved from Snowball once the white fur turned to tan).

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    1. We, too, had a cat named Squeaky – because she was. She had such a tiny little voice. That was back in Cheyenne.

      Screamer was an long-haired calico cat we inherited when we bought the house in Inver Grove Heights. She was strictly and outdoor cat, we were told. Turned out Screamer wasn’t aware of that and promptly moved in with us. We didn’t even have all our furniture in the house before she was comfortably lounging in our Eames chair in front of the downstairs fireplace. Screamer was missing half an ear; it had frozen and broken off one winter when the former owners of the house wouldn’t let her in.

      Buddy and Doty were two grey kittens we got from a farm in Scandia. Probably the sweetest cats we ever had, although that’s a tough call. We’ve had some really great cats. Boris, Midnight, and Monschka are three that come to mind.

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        1. I have no idea why Screamer was named that. She was not a screamer. My other calico cat, Monschka, wasn’t either. Feisty, yes, but not a screamer.

          At the time we inherited Screamer, we also had an orange tabby name Freuchen, named after a Danish arctic explorer. Freuchen was a large cat and a ferocious mouser. When he’d catch a mouse, he’d return to the house with the mouse in his mouth, announcing his catch with a loud, deep yowl all the way home. Screamer would hear that, and greet him on our patio, and he’d promptly relinquish the mouse to her.

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    2. Two cats named Midnight (yours and PJ’s). Just out of curiosity, were either of those named after Midnight the cat on Andy’s Gang, a truly strange kid’s show from the ‘50s?

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  24. poet Robert Bly named my first Great Pyrenees “Hannibal”. But I don’t remember why. It was in 1985. Too long ago. Wylson is my current Pyrenees, he was named by his previous owner. I had a Dutch breed, Schapendoes (Dutch breed) dog I named Jacques Brel. I got him from the dog pound but he had been born in France four years before. He lived with me until he died in his teens.

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