The Hampi Frog Project

Remember when we had a third roommate in Alleppey? We loved Barry the lizard. He kept to his corner, he didn't make sudden movements, and he didn't invade any personal or private moments. 

Well, as it turns out, we're not open to all extra roommates. When we got to Hampi and checked into our guesthouse (much more on Hampi and the masses of chillum-smoking Israelis at a later time), we noticed that we shared our bathroom with 2 frogs. Really, they looked like bumpy toads and weren't very cute. One was about the size of a golf ball and he lived in the crook of the toilet, and the other was about the size of a tennis ball and hung out in the corner. No thanks. 

To make matters worse, they would decide to jump towards you the moment you relaxed on the toilet…meaning you could never really relax. We were both dreading taking a shower. The showers here aren't partitioned off. You just stand in your bathroom, next to the toilet and dump water over yourself and the water runs to a drain in the corner of the room, flooding the entire bathroom for a moment. We had this image of the toads jumping around, having a froggy heyday in the water and weren't really excited to share our bathing time with them. Enter: Operation Frog Removal.

The original footage has a Blair Witch-esque quality and the video was taken during one of the many many power outages in Hampi, so I was wearing a headlamp while Tom manned our shower buckets and a stick. I swear, we should be on The Amazing Race.

Enjoy.

Update: The biggest toad returned! Amphibians strike back! I was sitting on the edge of our bed, writing this very post on the laptop when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. The large toad was very deliberately and casually strolling across our floor. I mean it. He was strolling. He wasn't hopping. He wasn't jumping. He wasn't being froggy. He was being smug. After I screamed in shock, I noticed there's a huge gap between our hut's door and the floor - a general invite to any and all creatures in the vicinity. Tom chased the frog (Jackson? Willard? Argus?) around the room with our monopod and, as he moved his backpack to find the frog, a lizard darted up the wall. Once again, we found ourselves giving a warm welcome to the lizard (Richard, aka Dick Lizard) and continued to chase the fat toad. We finally convinced him to jump into our shower bucket and we've re-released him to the wild. And now we keep a towel or something jammed under the door to send a message to all slimy and bumpy critters. "Stay out. No vacancy." Who's smug now?

Update 2: The smaller toad came back as well. I give up. Take it toads...the room is yours.