Our froggies’ welfare (& don’t drop the frogs!)

Hi everyone, Froglette here!

During Farmers’ Market, an incident occurred where some visitors queried us on “how will the frogs and tadpoles feel??”

1. We have to concur that we were overwhelmed by the warm responses of the crowd. Many parents were urging their children to take closer looks and get their hands wet in the tadpoles netting activity.
What we could have done better was to place another experienced frog handler to assist Frogician with the crowd who wanted a chance to meet the frogs.

2. The tadpoles were brought to the booth for an activity called ‘Minute to Net It’. The objective of the activity was to allow the children to classify and group the tadpoles according to their respective stages.
Again, our Frogician was fully flat out handling queries from adults, looking after the children, frogs and tadpoles. I was even tasked to drop by the activity booth from the ever-so busy food booth on occasions to make sure that our Frogician has the help she needed and that the welfare of these green hoppers be better cared for with 2 people around.

Look at the crowd at our activity booth!

A happy young boy holding a frog.

It was my first involvement in such a big event like this (I heard that at least 8000 people turned up!) and I certainly learnt how we ought to be more cautious in the activities we have designed and consider the implications from all the other welfare groups.

Next, I want to talk about the handling of our frogs. How do you exactly hold a frog?

This is a topic we touch on during our ‘Hands on the Frog’ sessions. Time to time, kids who volunteer to hold the frogs, drop or even throw the frogs onto the ground when the frogs start to struggle in their hands. PLEASE DON’T DO THAT!! As much as we put emphasis on this, frogs slipping out of an adult’s grip is a very common occurrence as these amphibians are very slimy!!

Bruises. Please treat our frogs kindly! 😦

Good news is that frogs are strong survivors out in the wild. They shed their skin periodically and their wound heal rather naturally without any use of medication.

The proper way of carrying a frog is to grip it tightly around its waist with either 1 or 2 hands. For kids, they usually carry the frog with 2 hands since their hands are so small. If the frog attempts to wriggle its way out of your hands, try not to squeeze it even tighter to prevent it from jumping away, and neither should you drop the frog; just maintain a firm grip around the frog’s waist and it will feel more secure in that grip. If you don’t feel comfortable in holding a struggling frog, you can either quickly pass it back to the tour guide, or squat down and put the frog onto the ground gently with the tour guide’s knowledge. All these will be briefed beforehand by the tour guide, so don’t worry if you can’t remember all of the steps to holding a frog now. Just remember: Don’t drop the frog!

Bye for now!