In search of ponies: Frog dilemma

It would appear my garage door has become the gateway to hell.

Frog hell that is.

They hop in, but they don’t hop out.

Problem is, I don’t want their little souls. Yet daily, I must kick three or four back to the driveway from which they came.

Their eyes stare at me from dried, shrunken little bodies, frozen where they made their last hop.

In the interest of trying to assign a greater purpose, I imagine a range of scenarios...

Perhaps, waged within my garage, there’s a froggy effort to compete with the terra-cotta warriors. However challenged by their obvious artistic limitations, they have sacrificed themselves for the cause.

I admit, I have indeed toyed with the idea of lining them up to help them complete the objective, or at least long enough for a group photo.

Or maybe they drank Kool Aid, proffered as a vehicle to attain utopia, and instead landed on my dirty, dusty concrete floor.

Ooooh, I know; they are Egyptian frogs and my garage is just the storage area until the pyramids are finished. Well I hope not because that would mean that big frog mummy I kicked into the pasture last night was the frog-tut and now I’m cursed.

And then there’s the pancake version, their pilgrimages to the froggy mecca interrupted by my rolling tires of death.

I bet they are posing for their own, froggy version of Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book (if you're not familiar with it, it's worth checking out).

Surely there must be a reason, for there are so very many of them.

Which I suppose brings me to the most logical, boring possibility.

They are dumb, hungry, prolific breeders and my garage is like that little nook in the froggy maze of life; you know, the corner they charge into but can’t find their way out of because, well, they’re dumb.

So what to do?

A coworker suggested a frog fence across the garage opening to keep them out. Great idea but it will keep my car out too.

How about Toad Tunnels?

A little Googling reveals that apparently I am not the first person faced with the conundrum of trying to help those toads that can’t help themselves.

Conceived in England and later mimicked in California and other locations, tunnel systems have been constructed under roadways to keep frogs and toads from playing the ever-addictive but oh-so short lived (pardon the pun) game of Frogger.

It turns out when they commit hari kari in large numbers it really tips ecosystems on their heads.

Well it’s a nice idea but wholly impractical for my purposes and besides, my ecosystem seems like it needs to be tipped the other way.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the circle of life and am enamored by the idea of the frogs policing the bugs and so on and so-forth, but all I seem to have ended up with is a plethora of frogs and bugs.

Which returns me full circle because I don’t want to be the boatman for their journey across the River Styx.

Instead of their hari kari, terra-cotta army building and pressed frog art, I wish an eco-sensitive percentage of my creative frogs would try their webbed appendages at doing magic shows and just disappear.

But it appears — there are 212,000 Google listings for toad overpopulation and no, I didn’t read them all — that regular mowing and insect control are the most commonly prescribed methods of reducing toad populations.

Gee, wish I’d thought of that.

I guess my next Google search will be somehow related to disposing of a copious number of toad carcasses.