Said she: "Wouldn't you like some frogspawn for that nice little pool of yours where the birds come to drink; maybe they'd like the tadpoles when they come out?"
And his reply: "Do you want to get me into trouble with the authorities?" Do you not know that it is absolutely forbidden to move frogspawn from one place to the other? Our Wildlife People really do look after Wildlife. "God be with the days", you may think, when of a weekend, kids with jamjars full of this precious commodity used to be seen coming along the streets from the foothills of the Dublin mountains or elsewhere. A call to the National Parks and Wildlife Service confirmed that the protection of frogspawn came within its overall brief, but the kindly woman at the other end of the phone stressed that it was not difficult to obtain permission in a good cause. For example, a teacher who wanted to instruct pupils in natural history would find permission easy to get, even on a continuing basis, apparently. Or someone who just seriously wanted to introduce frogs into his garden? Maybe - they would be good at keeping the slugs down?
One book made the interesting point that frogs are not addicted to water; indeed the common frog (rana temporia) is also known as the grass frog and spends more time on land than in ponds or rivers. They do, of course, prefer dampish places, in among long grass, maybe among young coniferous plants where they get cover from view and the necessary moist conditions. They have little protection from enemies save their camouflage colouring and their gift for immobility. Eamonn de Buitlear, in his book Ireland's Wild Countryside, tells of walking by a stream, a slow-moving stream, in February and being puzzled by a faint noise, not unlike that of a distant chainsaw. Then he spotted the source. The stream was a mass of frogspawn and writhing fat-bodied frogs. The males were making the noise as they strove to mount the females and fertilise the thousands of eggs being produced. The eggs swell to the jellied mass which we have all known from childhood. Frogs, Eamonn notes, are sluggish at this time and easy prey for herons, who, after all, have to live and nourish themselves in order to produce eggs and so on.
Our man above will have to go up the mountains to see those lovely wiggling tadpoles for himself. God be with the old days. Of course there's the question of eating frogs (rana esculenta), but we'll not get into that.