The Omega to My Alpha

This is Eduardo.  He is our Eastern Green Treefrog.  I am afraid that he does not get the appreciation he deserves in this house.  It is for this reason that I present him to you first. It is the only chance he will get to be first at something.  With three kids and three dogs who all make much more demanding demands, Ed has quietly accepted his role at the bottom of our household hierarchy.  I am, of course, the Alpha.  Between me and our little green Omega, seven other animals duke it out on a regular basis for positioning.  Only Ed and I are solid in our spots.  And, yet, he brings much peace to my life.  

He accepts any name we call him.  Even when he first arrived and we called him Ezmerelda for a few weeks.  That was, of course, before we knew he was a male frog.  You might be wondering just how do we know he is a male?  Huge vocal sac.  Much calling out for females.  It is still a guess, but he seems comfortable with the assumption.  That self-assuredness is just one more thing I love about him.  

Also, he eats whatever I fed him.  In the winter months he happily eats cricket after cricket after cricket after cricket.  When it is warmer up here...moths, grasshoppers, almost anything we catch buzzing around the porch light.  Flies are a rare favorite.  Mostly because my reflexes are slow, not his.   He quickly forgave me the green bottle beetle incident.  The whole event was very "beetle bottle battle" from Fox in Sox for those of you up on your Seuss.  Eduardo went for the beetle.  He usually gets the insects most of the way in his mouth and then does some fancy constricting.  But the beetle bit back and would not let go.  Poor Ed!  This beetle both tasted bad and it was clinging to his tongue.  Our green hero was shaking himself and trying to flick the vile thing from his face.  The vile thing held on.  I had to intervene by picking up the frog and pulling off the beetle.  Ed recovered quickly.  And the beetle...well...he is encased in a glass-lidded metal container and is a star in my bug collection.

But what I love the most about Eduardo is the very still and mostly quiet way he sits almost all of the time.  It is a refreshing difference from the rest of us.  Very Zen-like.  As my Yogi, Herbie, would say, "He has mastered the fine art of nothing doing."  Oh, and he can twiddle his thumbs.  Really.  Look at the picture!