Frog facts shared at library

A little 10-year-old Plains boy has big plans for the future and it includes giving the town more than just hardware and grocery stores, he said. John McNamara is planning to build a zoo in Plains.

He feels he has a good start with a menagerie of animals he has at home -tarantulas, snakes, exotic pheasants, quails, chickens, sheep, a horse, a dog, and a cat - and he isn't finished.

He said he loves animals. On Saturday, he decided to pass on some of that excitement by giving a presentation about frogs at the Thompson Falls Public Library. Seven kids and seven adults showed up for his 30-minute frog lecture. Head librarian Crystal Buchanan said it was part of "Fun Froggy Facts Day." The group also painted ceramic frogs made on a 3-D printer.

He had frogs of three distinct stages of life, including two tadpoles, three froglets, and two adults. McNamara talked to the group about a frog's lifespan, habitat, and food. He and his mother, Carissa, caught the Columbia spotted frogs and tadpoles at Swamp Creek, which runs through their 84-acre ranch, the day before. The two frogs, which he guessed were a few months old, were captured in a large puddle near the creek. The tadpoles were about 14 days old and the froglets a bit older.

The tadpoles started growing their back legs Friday night. He said it takes about 14 weeks for the legs to fully form. One of the froglets was missing a foot, which McNamara believes he lost in an accident. He explained how they get their legs. "It's pretty cool. Their legs are under their skin and they break out like an alien," he said.

McNamara caught the animals just for his presentation and released them back into the same spot in Swamp Creek Saturday afternoon. "He's constantly catching something," said Carissa. He caught a large boreal toad, also known as a western toad, the previous week and had hoped to catch it again for the presentation, but couldn't find it or any others. As a substitute, he had a plastic toy toad named "Marvin" in his exhibit, which showed about 30 different types of frogs, along with turtles and grasshoppers. He had been working on collecting the pieces for the display board for the last month and finished last week with his mother.

Even at his young age, McNamara is no stranger to public speaking. In the last two years, he has taken top honors in the junior category in the 4-H Communication Days competition, which was always about his critters. "He loves talking about his animals. He just loves nature, and it's right out his back door," said Karrie Baldwin, his grandmother in Thompson Falls.

This is the third time McNamara has given a presentation at the library in Thompson Falls. He also gave a spiel on snakes and one on tarantulas. He'd like to do his next one on lizards. He plans to do a frog project for one of his 4-H projects at fair. He has 11 projects this year, including his tarantula, cat, sheep, pheasants, along with seven non-animal projects. His grandmother said he's always reading about bugs and other animals. He does a considerable amount of research before each of his presentations.

His mother said he's been catching animals since he was 2 years old and in diapers. While living in Costa Rica, he used to catch geckos and poisonous toads. She said he'd catch them and then let them go. "I never got sick, I washed my hands afterwards," he said. "People always take them the wrong way, but I love them. All animals, big and small, are my passion, except for leeches and ticks," said McNamara.

Recently he found a type of scorpion in the property. It was something he'd never seen before and for a short time he thought he discovered a new species. He submitted it to the Montana Field Guide, which told him the arachnid is a pseudoscorpion, also known as a false scorpion. It has no venom-filled stinger, and though it has venom in its claws, it's not harmful to humans, according to the Montana Field Guide. He was told they are rare to spot in Montana because they are so small and looked over. McNamara had a more standard scorpion for about seven months, but it recently died.

McNamara has his eyes set on a couple of Madagascar cockroaches. "I put the kibosh on that one, but I'll probably give in to that, too," said Carissa, who thoroughly supports her son's penchant for animals, even though she's not exactly thrilled that he keeps his 11 snakes and nearly a dozen tarantulas in his bedroom. He recently bought six new Brazilian salmon pink tarantulas from a place in Washington, naming the largest of the group "Pinky." His favorite spider is a pink-toed tarantula he's had for five years called "Uma Fang." He also wants to buy a glass frog, typically found in Central America. Their color most of the time is greenish, and their internal organs, such as the heart and liver, are visible through the skin, which McNamara finds fascinating.

But McNamara plans to have a lot more animals when he builds his zoo in Plains. He said it'll have a toy pet store at the entrance, a zoo in the middle and a pet store at the exit. "Plains needs a bit of excitement," he said.