When I was at the Warden's Watch yesterday morning, I heard an incredibly loud bullfrog.

   Usually, when I try to locate the frog itself, I can't -- the guy is across the lake or hidden along the shore. 

   (Or it is at night, and I am in my bed, trying to get some sleep.)

   But yesterday's bullfrog was fairly easy to find: His enormous yellow air sac expanded and contracted so dramatically every time he belted out his familiar "jug-o-rum" call that I could see him with my naked eye.

    I did a little reading about Mr. Bullfrog, and he is quite a guy.

http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/bullfrog.htm

    It is said that his call can be heard for a quarter mile, that he can grow up to eight inches long, and that he can be aggressive in protecting his turf.

   His diet includes all sorts of bugs, and he is a prolific mosquito eater, although he has been known to eat a small bird on occasion.

   I would not believe the latter except that I saw it a bullfrog kill and try to eat an gosling  -- which my friend Jerry Barrack captured on film for the book that he and I did five years ago on the Celery Farm.

   As I was heading home, I saw another huge bullfrog jumping across the bridge at the spillway (the bridge just before the Warden's Watch peninsula).

  Was it a female, lured by that Isaac Hayes baritone? Or was it a turf war in the making? Or neither?

   If only I had had the time to stay.

   That's the problem with the Celery Farm. At some point, you have to leave.