froggy poop

photo taken in my front yard

 

Sometimes, people who know that I have a biology degree ask me things like, "what should I do about this festering wound my dog has?" and "how many different kinds of scorpions are there?". It's as if they think that all those years of study should be useful, or something.

Well, I guess I know a thing or two about cell division, evolutionary theory, plant hormones, and other such cool things. But I seem to have this built-in attraction to all things unemployable and otherwise inapplicable. I spent my undergrad years focusing mainly on intertidal life, especially the really cool stuff, like algae, nudibranchs and anemones. I love that stuff.

So, not only have I never ever had a real biology-related job, but my biology background really hasn't been helpful in any way, other than that learning-for-the-sake-of-learning thing.*

For example, when I started seeing poop like this on my patio every day, I assumed it was cat poop. Day after day. For months. Until one day, my also-biologist partner, Macondo Papa, realized that it was frog poop. Frog Poop! So much for our biology cred...


There are lots and lots of frogs around these parts. Big ones. The one at the top of my sidebar had just pounced on a grasshopper and swallowed it whole. See the bit of the poor guy sticking out of its mouth? The grasshopper put up a fight from the inside, but alas, was eventually turned into just another piece of poop like the one pictured here.

Anyways, I like knowing that it's frog poop littering our patio. It feels all jungly-authentic, and I somehow enjoy the morning ritual of sweeping it away a lot more now.

*Oh! And it led to one of my first bonding moments with Macondo Papa (formerly "f." on this blog - I don't know why 'Macondo Papa' didn't occur to me until just now). He was sitting next to me on an all-night bus ride in Mexico, way back when. After the obvious "where are you from"s and "how long have you been travelling"s, we discovered that we both had biology degrees that we would probably never use! He keeps finding sneaky creative ways to use his, though.