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Our Canadian friend George was seated on the toilet when suddenly something jumped from inside the bowl and attached firmly to his family jewels. This rugged and stoic hunk of a real man bolted up, freed the frog from his hang me down and ran outside to distance himself from the critter. A Cuban Tree Frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis)… AKA Frogzilla (Godzilla has nothing on this guy)… was in the most sacred room of the house and George wanted as much distance between he and it as possible. Florida was never George’s favorite place and this incident did not improve the situation. Tree frogs are associated with trees like Canadians are to hockey rinks. It is totally natural for a tree frog to climb a tree. They have specially suited suction cupped toes that make them excellent climbers. Once up in the tree the frog jumps onto the roof of a house where they seek out the warmth of the shingles.  By the mid-1920s, Cuban Tree Frogs arrived in the Florida Keys via cargo, such as bananas, transported on ships.  Once warmed up, they start searching for a cooler area, and the toilet vent pipe is often the place. Frogs can fall into your bathroom vent pipe and that’s how they end up in the toilet. This incident never would have happened if George had simply cut back the trees that hung over his roof and installed a wire mesh screen over the toilet vent pipe. These frogs are known to be nuisance pests that often invade plumbing systems, toilets and sink drains, but can also can cause havoc with utilities and make a general mess wherever they hide.  Cover roof vent pipes with hardware cloth to prevent entry into buildings by Cuban Tree Frogs. Credit: UF/IFAS  This Cuban Tree Frog apparently likes the warmth of the vehicle’s hood. During the day they seek out cool places, often under shutters and between patio doors. Each Spring when we lubricate the accordion shutters before hurricane season, we always find stains down the wall behind the panels where the frogs have been hiding. As we close the shutters the frogs emit mucous that is noxious to humans and pets, and can cause an allergic reaction and trigger asthma. At night Cuban tree frogs are attracted by lights, which attract bugs and provide a powerful incentive for tree frogs looking for a meal.  During the day the Cuban Tree Frog seeks shelter under shutters and around screen doors. This polite invader tries to use the door knocker to gain access. There is nothing more tropical than the croak of frogs on a humid summer evening. It starts with a single utterance from a lone frog, then seconds later another chimes in, and before you know it is an out of tune stereophonic chorus resonating from the pond, the hedges, the tree tops, the gutter track and rainwater cistern. Be quiet and and listen, as there is no way you can talk over the noise. What was the Grimm brothers message in their fairy tale The Frog Prince? Was it that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Some may see a frog, but the princess sees something more beautiful, so she kisses the frog and a curse is broken and the frog becomes her handsome prince. It reminds me of an incident that happened during my sailing days, at English Harbor, Antigua. The Captains daughter, who was about 5 years old at the time, paused to marvel at a frog sitting on a tree. As she grew closer, the frog jumped onto her face! Yikes. No prince appeared however. Frogs are a bit creepy, and slimy but also beautiful in their creation.  The Frog Prince: Grimm Fairy Tales. The moral of the story: beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Since the first Cuban Tree frogs were discovered in Key West they have progressively spread north to the Florida mainland most likely by the construction of State Road AIA in the 1940’s, on trucks full of plants and produce, and now are firmly established as far north as South Carolina. Its ability to thrive in urban areas have made it highly invasive. Cuban Tree Frogs are commonly available in pet stores. Cubans are the largest tree frogs, varying in size from 2 to 5.5 inches in length. They eat insects, but also prey on our native tree frogs, including their tadpoles. The invasive Cuban variety outcompete our native tree frogs such as the American Green Tree Frog (Hyla cinerea) which is only 1 to 3 inches long and the Squirrel Tree Frog (Hyla squirella) which is smaller, only 1 to 1-1/2 inches long. A Cuban female can lay several hundred to 1000 eggs at a time, and eggs hatch in 30 hours and tadpoles can fully develop in one month.  The native American Green Tree Frog (Hyla cinerea) grows to 1 - 3 inches long. Credit: UF/IFAS  The native Squirrel Tree Frog (Hyla squirella), is only 1 to 1-1/2 inches long and are rapidly disappearing due to predation by the invasive Cuban Tree Frog. Credit: UF/IFAS Features that can help identify Cuban Tree Frogs are their large physical size and larger sticky pads on their toes. They can change color and patterns, and can be white, beige, brown, yellow, green or combinations of these colors. Their skin is rough and warty. Cubans are considered invasive, so you can attempt to contain them by making a Tree Frog House. By removing Cuban tree frogs, you can help Florida's native tree frogs survive. This link to a UF extension publication explains more: https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/UW308  Cuban tree frogs are mostly gray, brown, or green. This young frog, resting on an orchid leaf has a more greenish color than an adult.
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Summertime is tropical fruit time. It is hot and humid, too much for most plants, and humans. Those of us who are here get the sweet reward of mango season. My mango tree is Valencia Pride variety, purchased at Fairchild Tropical Gardens. They recommended it as a good variety for Key Largo. It produces in June/July and gets rave reviews from everyone who has tasted the fruit.  Squirrels move around with reckless ease, as if the gravity does not apply to them. In fruit season, I monitor the tree daily, checking for mangos that may be on the verge of ripeness. The object is to pick the fruit before the resident grey squirrel finds it. One day in late June I spied a grey squirrel near the mango tree. At the same moment the squirrel, who was just a short leap away from the mango tree, stopped in its tracks. It heard me and it remained motionless in an attempt to hide from sight. Some fruit were showing signs of ripeness, so I picked a half dozen that were a few days shy of being perfectly ripe. Valencia Pride mangoes have a color change from their unripe solid green state, to yellowish gold and reddish orange as they ripen. The fruit is considered mature when the end of the fruit away from the stem broadens out. Luckily the fruit ripens in stages, which allows the fruit to stay on the tree until you are ready for the next batch.  This squirrel is making noise, flicking its tail because I was near the tree and it viewed me as a threat.  A squirrel’s front teeth are always growing, so they must constantly keep chewing to wear them down so they don’t grow into their lower jaw. Their preferred foods include bark, berries, seeds and acorns. My bushy tailed rodent visitor will get its share of fruit no matter how vigilant I am. It will find a fruit and nibble on it, then move onto another fruit and do the same. Squirrel proofing your fruit trees is not impossible. Some people wrap their tree in netting. Others set out motion-activated sprinklers. One year I wrapped each hanging fruit in a brown paper bag. That was crazy, and labor intensive, and I couldn’t see the fruit when they were in the bags. I’d go out there and find a paper bag with a mushed fruit in it on the ground. I kinda feel sorry for the squirrels, and I would never do harm to the one or two that come visit. One way to lessen their impact is by cleaning up any downed and rotting fruit and by providing an alternative food source. Unfortunately birds and squirrels share the same diet, so you may be faced with squirrels raiding the bird feeder.  My prize mangos begin to turn from solid green to shades of yellow gold and reddish orange as they ripen on the tree. Squirrels are common visitors in the urban landscape, so much so that we seldom pay attention to them. My yard is just one stop on a circuit which spans from tree to tree in its neighborhood range. The local squirrels never have to leave the treetops in order to get to my yard. Squirrels get hit by cars when they cross the road. The iNaturalist database is full of pictures of “flat-squirrels” with the sighting location as Crocodile Lake/Card Sound Road, a fragmented habitat with a 55 mph highway running through the middle of it.  The squirrel stops in its tracks, just a short leap away from the mango tree. It heard me and it remained motionless in an attempt to hide from sight. Since the squirrel spends much of its life in the trees, it’s obviously very good at navigating from tree to tree in search of its food. It’s like an arboreal super-highway. On gardening day we were trimming the green and silver buttonwood hedge running the length of the backyard. It is a mature hedge with many thick connecting branches. The squirrel had a path along the border, and the daredevil squirrel regularly leapt from branch to branch on its path. On this day we heard a crash, and something tumbling through the foliage. Much bigger than a golf ball, I thought. The next thing we saw was a squirrel emerging from the brush, and the look on its face was priceless, as it processed what had just happened. The squirrel looked at me as if to say “Are you responsible for this?” The squirrel had mindlessly leapt for a branch that had been recently removed, an unexpected alteration to it’s world. The squirrel also gets a bad rap for being forgetful. Squirrels are credited for planting many oak and walnut forests, as they bury their food cache for later, and then forget that they did so, and the resulting forests grown from the seeds are attributed to squirrels. The year 2026 produced a bumper crop on my mango tree, and I felt superstitious, since the last prolific crop on my property was in 1992, the summer that hurricane Andrew decimated North Key Largo, Homestead and vicinity. That June before we lost the tree in the August hurricane, my mother-in-law Helen’s mango tree was loaded with fruit. I peeled and chopped the fruit, and helped her make several cases of mango chutney, using the original Hayden recipe. To this day I label my mango chutney “Mrs. Atkinson’s” as a tribute to Helen Atkinson Ellis.    Mango Bread Recipe Card  A golden glint catches my eye. Atop a purple bloom a dragonfly sits with tightly clenched legs, its small body changing direction like a pennant in the wind. How beautiful…. a God-given work of art. My butterfly garden has produced many moments of joy in its first year. Designed with pollinators in mind, it has hosted many things with wings. From the buzzing bees, to migrating birds splashing in the fountain; from hungry caterpillars to butterflies sipping sweet nectar, their larvae munching on the milkweed where chrysalis will soon hang.  Looking closely, I marvel at this tiny creature, a living piece of art. The purple firespike was planted for the hummingbirds, a species which still remains elusive from my vision and that of my camera. The good news is the dragonfly took advantage of the firespike's spindle-like bloom to rest. The creature let me take multiple photos with my camera lens just inches away from it’s tiny form. What a fearless critter! Is that why they call it the Dragonfly?  I planted the purple firespike for the hummingbirds, a bird species which still remains elusive from my camera. The good news is the dragonfly took advantage of the firespike's spindle-like bloom to rest. The name dragonfly is from the Old English word dragoun, referring to a mythical serpent or sea monster; and the word fleoge referring to flying insects. By putting the two words together you get dragounfleoge, meaning dragon-like flying insect. There is nothing to fear about these “dragons.” They don’t bite because they don’t have teeth. They do have a serrated mandible which comes in handy for holding and crushing prey. The Halloween Pennant Dragonfly (Celithemis eponina) featured in my photos is named for its orange-colored wings, with dark brown bands. It is found in the Eastern U.S., especially near fresh water ponds, and is seen perching on tall grasses, reeds and cattails. The males are often spotted in groups of 10-15 and are in search of a female. The males are more vibrantly colored, and have a red face while the females have a yellowish face, and heart-like markings on their abdomen. They appear in the Keys usually in late Spring/early Summer, about the same time as the mosquitos arrive and the snowbirds depart. Dragonflies are known as “Mosquito Hawks.” They are excellent flyers, which is a good thing, because they only eat while in flight. Dragonflies catch their prey by grabbing it with their feet or mandibles. Getting a picture of a dragonfly catching a mosquito in flight would definitely be a prize winning photo! The behavior is not rare…. It’s estimated adult dragonflies consume 30 - 100 mosquitos per day, and if they can’t fly they will starve. There are three stages in the life-cycle of the dragonfly: egg, larva (also known as nymph) and adult. The female dragonfly deposits eggs in a pond and a tadpole like prolarva emerges from the egg, This stage lasts up to a year in warmer climates, and here the larvae hunt for mosquito larvae and more.  Dragonfly eggs laid in quiet ponds hatch as nymphs possessing a voracious appetite. They begin controlling the mosquito population by eating mosquito larvae, plus fish and tadpoles . They remain in this stage for just weeks, months, or up to 1-3 years. After 5-14 molts, the nymph climbs out of the pond, molds a final time, and an intact dragonfly emerges from its cracked exoskeleton. Photo Credit: University of Florida So how did they find my garden in the Upper Keys which is surrounded by coastal marshes and mangrove swamps? Dragonflies can do well in small freshwater ponds like mine, which never runs dry, is free from chlorine and chemicals; my pond even has a red mangrove living in it which was planted from seed. The leaf debris at the bottom of the pond creates a natural habitat and circulation keeps it clear. I often see tadpoles, and the birds are regular visitors. Perhaps I have a dragonfly habitat? An outdoor pond has some benefits: my orchids like the transpiration of the circulating water, the birds have a place to drink, especially migrating birds who stop there. Am I on their map? My pool lady saw my waterfall and asked if I’d like it cleaned of algae. No, I replied, it is for the birds. If you have a pond, don’t keep it too clean for you may disturb the areas where critters lay their eggs. Also chlorine is not good for our critters to drink. There is nothing wrong with a little “green.” Avoid pesticides near the water. That goes for ponds and also our nearshore waters.  This photo appears to show the adult dragonfly chewing foliage, but that is not the case. Dragonflies are meat-eaters… consuming exclusively flying insects, especially mosquitos, flies and gnats. Dragonflies have the potential to control mosquitos, and indirectly the diseases they carry. So think twice when you get that notice from the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD). These agencies commonly use the organophosphate insecticides malathion and naled and the synthetic pyrethroid insecticides prallethrin, etofenprox, pyrethrins, permethrin, resmethrin and sumithrin for adult mosquito control. There is collateral damage from broad application of these compounds. Per the FKMCD announcement: “Weather permitting”… we will nuke all flying insects in your area:… or as they state it, “there will be a fog truck in your area.” The salt marsh mosquito is an annoyance, but does not endanger us with disease. Would it be better to monitor and eliminate areas of standing water where “bad” mosquitos breed? Would it be better to burn a mosquito coil or apply spray to our clothing to keep areas mosquito free? It’s not a perfect world, so lets make “more better” choices.  A dragonfly has many lensed eyes and a nearly 360 degree field of view. |
CAROL ELLIS
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October 2026
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