John Ploncensky, age 8, of St. Paul, Minnesota, for his question:

How do frogs survive the winter?

Mr. Frog cannot abide the cold and somehow he knows when the long winter months are coming. While the leaves on the trees are changing to rainbow colors* he is getting ready to escape from the bad weather ahead. Before the trees are bare, he disappears from his pond and we do not hear another peep from him until springtime comes around again.

In the dead of winter the ponds and streams are frozen over and the grassy meadows are wrapped under blankets of snow. There are no frogs and no toads to be found any¬where around. If you made friends with a frog during the summer, you may wonder what has happened to him. Well, Andy can report that there is no need to worry. Your froggy friend is quite comfortable, thank you. He is safely nestled in some cozy cre¬vice, fast asleep with a big fat froggy smile on his face. Actually, his sleep is much deeper than our kind of nightly sleep. He is in a sort of coma, something like a dead faint that lasts for months. This long, deep deep winter sleep is called hibernation.

Mr. Frog gets ready for hibernation in the fall. While the woods are changing color, he is very busy catching extra flies and eating extra snacks all day and most of the night. His body changes this extra food into fat and Mr. Frog gets plump. He will have no food all through the months of hibernation, but his body can use up some of his stored fat to stay alive and he does not starve while he sleeps.

As the fall weather grows cooler, our froggy friend looks around for a sensible place to hide. He may take a dive right down to the bottom of his favorite pond and nestle himself under the muddy floor. Later, Jack Frost will freeze the pond and cover the top with a sheet of glassy ice. But the bottom of the pond will not freeze and Mr. Frog's muddy burrow will stay moist. Instead of the pond, our friend may decide to hibernate on the land. He may nestle under a deep pile of fallen leaves or cuddle himself into a frog size hole in a tree trunk. Later the snow will fall and cover his winter nest with a blanket that shuts out the bitter cold of the wind.

Now you wonder how the frog manages to breathe through the winter.  Well, the smart fellow has two ways of breathing. He can breathe through lungs, as we do. But he also can breathe through his skin. If his special skin is moist, it can dissolve oxygen and send it into his body. And during hibernation the frog does not breathe very much. His little heartbeat slows down to almost nothing and he needs very little oxygen to keep going. He does not eat or move from his cozy nest until the first breath of spring wafts around and warms up the world again.

The warmth of spring starts Mr. Frog's heart beating faster and wakes him up. Out he comes from his hiding place to smile at the world. He thinks of food, but almost at once he thinks of dating a lady frog. We can hear him croaking a song to her. Pretty soon there are frog eggs in the ponds, then tadpoles. In about two months the tadpoles are teenage frogs. By fall, these teenagers are grownup and ready to find themselves cozy crevices to hide themselves away from next winter's weather.