Lou The White Frog Is A Connecticut Rarity

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By Nancy K. Crevier


The white frog found by Matt Taylor last summer is not actually an albino frog, but lacks the pigmentation to give it green coloring. The frog, now in residence at the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, is the only green frog from Connecticut in the zoo's collection with this color anomaly. -Steve Taylor photo



Frogs in the house are not unusual for Angie and Steve Taylor of Newtown and their 14-year-old son, Matt. "We raised frogs all summer," explains Mrs Taylor. "We found eggs in our pool when we opened it this past summer and we brought them in. Forty to 50 of them hatched. We went through buying them fruit flies, then we started releasing them in the creek. It was so much fun."

Those frogs were common tree frogs, whose loud trilling fills the area swamp and woodlands during the spring and summer. But about two months ago, Matt found an unusual specimen as he dallied by the creek near their Scudder Road home.

This frog was all white, with black eyes. Mr Taylor says, "We looked it up online and it didn't seem too rare. Just a mutant frog." Because it looked unique, though, the family kept it over the summer. The frog was set up in an aquarium habitat, where he spent most of his days resting on a rock near the water. Says Mrs Taylor, "We didn't even think it would live."

The white frog did live, however, and on a diet of crickets and mealworms that the Taylors bought for him and by September "Lou Albino" (named after the pro wrestling manager Lou Albano) had doubled his original size, to three inches.

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