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the Frenchies are maroons.
Posted on 08/21/2005 11:18:23 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
PICTURE this: French hunters stealing out at night in pairs, one with a torch to light up the eyes of their prey, the other armed with a .22 calibre rifle equipped with a telescopic sight and a silencer.
Their quarry? Invaders from the United States - bullfrogs, to be precise, that bellow like cows and typically weigh in at a hefty 600 grams.
This is France, to be sure, but the end game of this hunt is not sauteed frog legs.
These marksmen are ecologists, out to exterminate the bullfrogs - a.k.a. Rana Catesbeina - which are threatening the local ecosystem.
"A man living in Vayres (30 kilometres, 20 miles east of Bordeaux) stocked his pond with them in 1968 as a joke, and a few years later every stretch of water in the region was full of them," said Luc Gueugneau, who works in the government agency overseeing wild animals and hunting.
The bullfrogs live for as long as nine years, hibernating from October to March, but the rest of the time gorging on local frogs, shellfish, insects, and even fledgling birds, said ecologist Mathieu Detaint.
They have virtually no predators, and each lay up to 25,000 eggs a year, against 10,000 laid by the local frogs.
"We tried draining the ponds, but it costs a lot and is not efficient enough because there are always some bullfrogs that remain," Detaint said.
One thing that did work, though, he said, was trapping the tadpoles and very young frogs in nets.
Said Gueugneau: "For the moment, hunting the adults with rifles has proved to be the most efficient way of attacking them, because it gets rid of those able to reproduce."
The hunting is done at night, as that is when the frogs are most active and easiest to spot.
"We carried out five hunts between September last year and this July, killing about 120 of them," Detaint said.
"At the start, the idea seemed ludicrous, but we became convinced little by little because they allowed us to eradicate all the adults at two sites where the system was tested."
The ecologists say they a full-scale eradication programme should be in place by 2007, and hope to fully eliminate the bullfrogs in five or 10 years.
Obviously putting up more of a battle on this one than the weak mongrels ever did in any war!
You can't make this up.
Green on green engagement. Friendly fire. You name it.
I expect they will fail.
A hasty surrender might help.
Send them some Cane Toads, to get rid of the bullfrogs... ;^)
the Frenchies are maroons.
Oh, no, not another office pool. OK, I got French surrender in 23 days, 6 hours, 3 minutes. Twenny buckadingdongs. Come on, puh-LEEZE somebody drop a C-note on the French or the pot's gonna be empty...
Why bother? They're just gonna surrender in a week or two anyway.
I'd just taken a sip of tea when I scrolled to your post. The tea is now all over my desk! LOL!!!!
This senseless cycle of Frog-on-frog violence must stop!
Agreed...but it's a frog-eat-frog world out there...
Why to I have this vision of hundreds of Bull Frogs marching in to Paris under the l'Arc de Triomphe?
They're just Toadies for their Islamofacist masters over there...
Only a frenchman would go jacklighting frogs and then not eat 'em. Stick to snails you pollywogs!
These French are not very smart!
They need YEARS to work out an eradication plan?
Dummies, all they have to do is put a nominal bounty on Bull Frog carcass, but allow the hind legs to be kept for eating.
Of course paying French kids a few Franc's per frog would not make these "Ecologist" so wealthy as the current ineffectual scheme does.
The proper way to harvest frogs is with a Gig, similar to a small barbed pitch fork. Much safer than shooting them!
For sporting amusement you can even catch them with dry flies and a fishing pole.
This story reminds me... my kids caught 5 tree frogs today and had them in a paper cup that tipped over in the car on the way home from church. By the time the tipped over cup was noticed only one frog could be found. A thorough search was conducted in vain. 4 treefrogs will eventually be discovered, mummified, somewhere in the station wagon. Maybe I should call my neighbor over to search, too. He's French....
Hell, even our frogs kick their butt...
Let's see, the bullfrogs lay about 25,000 eggs annually, and the frog-hunters have managed to shoot 120 of them in five hunts over 11 months. Factoring in these frogs having few natural predators, even a mathematically-challenged brain such as mine can figure out who's going to win.
The French are always underestimating the Americans, even our bullfrogs.
Queensland kids often use cricket bats to hit the aforementioned cane toads "for a six". Ain't cultural diversification grand?
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