Mississippi River Bullfrogs
After spending a couple of days around Sudbury, we were on our way again[1], and on June 23, 2018 we pulled into the Riverbend Park campground, on the Mississippi River, just outside of Packenham. No, not that Mississippi River. The other one[2]. Anyway, the river flows past the campground at a nice leisurely pace, with lots of reeds growing on the bank. In the evening and early morning, there was a constant chorus of green frogs with their distinctive “Plonk!” call that sounds a lot like plucking the lowest string on a banjo. And, every now and then, there was a much louder “BRRRUUUMMM!” call, which was made by these guys:
These are bullfrogs, Lithobates catesbeianus. And they are monsters, at least for frogs. The ones that we saw had bodies about the size of my hand, and probably weighed a pound or so. Their tympanums (the circular features behind their eyes) are bigger than their eyes, so they are most likely males (the females have smaller tympanums, and are bigger frogs overall)
Sam tried to catch a couple of them, and while they let her get fairly close, they were just a bit too quick for her. “If only I had my net!”, she said.
Anyway, we might in theory have bullfrogs back in the UP, but we’ve never seen or heard any here. Bullfrogs are pretty serious predators, they will eat anything they can stuff into their rather substantial mouths – insects, small fish, other frogs, birds . . .
I’m not quite sure why we don’t seem to have them around Houghton, the climate seems congenial and there are plenty of appropriate wetlands. It could be that they simply don’t expand their range as fast as other frogs, and they just haven’t managed to swim or hop this far yet after the ice age ended. It is also possible that they were here, but then they all got eaten back when the human population was higher during the mining and logging booms. Bullfrogs are easily big enough to be worth eating. My grandmother cooked one up for us when I was a kid, I remember that it had enough meat on the body that she roasted the whole frog, not just the legs. It tasted like chicken. Go figure.
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[1] On the way, we passed a turnoff for the Brent Meteor Crater. It would have taken us 30 km out of our way, though, and at that point we’d been on the road from Sudbury for quite some time, so we didn’t go up to see it. Judging from the pictures, it doesn’t actually look all that craterlike anymore anyway.
This was a much smaller meteorite than the one that made Sudbury, and was also considerably more recent at a “mere” 450 million years old. I think there was animal life on land by that time, but not by much. “Historical Site”, indeed.
[2] According to Wikipedia, the origin of the name of this Mississippi River is different from that of the bigger one that you are probably thinking of, and is a result of mangling a completely different native name. No one is completely sure of what that native name was, although the most popular theory is that it is derived from an Algonquin name that translates to ‘[painted] image river’, referring to some pictograms found nearby. Anyway, it is a pretty river. Just outside of Packenham, there is a point where the river flows fast and shallow over a rock bottom, and there is a five-arch stone bridge spanning it. According to the historical marker, this stone bridge was built in 1903 after everyone got sick of the wooden bridge washing away every spring. It is apparently the only bridge of this type in North America.
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As a bridge geek, I approve of this bridge! So neat!