It is impossible for the frogs to escape from the stairwell without human intervention. The stairs are fairly high and only slabs of concrete with air below them. The most I’ve seen a frog succeed at is making it halfway underneath the door to the maintenance area also located in the stairwell. I have never observed another human helping a frog.
From my memory (not the best experimental apparatus, but it is what I have), the ratio of frog corpses after work to live, unrescued frogs in the morning has thus far been 1:1.
Is there any possibility of constructing some kind of frog barrier at the top of the stairwell or amphibian escape ramp (PVC pipe?) or does the layout of the public space make that impractical? My preference would be for an engineering solution if I hypothetically valued frog survival highly. A web-cam activated frog elevator would be entertaining but probably overkill.
Of course this may not be optimal if the warm-fuzzies from individual frog-assisting episodes are of greater expected utility than automated out-of-sight out-of-mind frog moving machinery.
I think the warm-fuzzies from an engineering solution could be quite significant.
Throughout the day, if I had encountered a live or dead frog in my stairwell, my mind might return to the subject of frogs caught in stairwells several times. If I had saved the frog by hand, I would feel some satisfaction (tinged with some cynicism, see here) but also anxiety that I could not always be there for every frog. With the engineering solution, I would feel proud about human ingenuity and happy about all the potential frogs I could be saving any moment. Lots and lots of warm fuzzies.
I would not be able to alter the stairwell in such a fashion. This is a commercial apartment complex with many other people living in the building. The mailboxes are also in this bottom-level stairwell, meaning it gets quite a bit of traffic aside from myself. I reiterate I have never seen another person help a frog, and the ratio has always been 1:1.
Other buildings in the apartment complex apparently also have this problem, as I asked someone who lived in another building if they’d ever seen a dead frog, and they said yes, on occasion, they see them when getting the mail. I did not ask if they saw any live frogs. There are at least 4 identical stairwells per building, and at least 6 buildings adjacent to a pond. This adds to my feelings of “this problem is too big for me.”
When I was a young child my dad was building an extension on our house. He dug a deep trench for the foundations and one morning I came down to find what my hazy memory suggests were thousands of baby frogs from a nearby lake. I spent some time ferrying buckets of tiny frogs from the trench to the top of our driveway in a bid to save them from their fate.
The following morning on the way to school I passed thousands of flat baby frogs on the road. I believe this early lesson may have inured me to the starkly beautiful viciousness of nature.
How wide is the entrance to the stairwell? Could you add a ramp at the sides so the frogs have a chance of getting up without inconveniencing the other people? It would also enable people with bikes to wheel them in easier (if any of the residents store bikes in their flats).
Is there any group/person who represents the views of the residents of the building(s)? Perhaps write a letter to them with the best solution to the problem you think of and let them sort it out?
Otherwise I would probably devise some form of frog capture device, so I could quickly and cleanly remove frogs (alive or dead). Some form of hinged box controlled by a line on a pole.
Edit: Err, read the frequency. Once every 2 weeks doesn’t justify taking a tool with you, Probably just take some gloves and rescue the frogs.
It is impossible for the frogs to escape from the stairwell without human intervention. The stairs are fairly high and only slabs of concrete with air below them. The most I’ve seen a frog succeed at is making it halfway underneath the door to the maintenance area also located in the stairwell. I have never observed another human helping a frog.
From my memory (not the best experimental apparatus, but it is what I have), the ratio of frog corpses after work to live, unrescued frogs in the morning has thus far been 1:1.
Is there any possibility of constructing some kind of frog barrier at the top of the stairwell or amphibian escape ramp (PVC pipe?) or does the layout of the public space make that impractical? My preference would be for an engineering solution if I hypothetically valued frog survival highly. A web-cam activated frog elevator would be entertaining but probably overkill.
Of course this may not be optimal if the warm-fuzzies from individual frog-assisting episodes are of greater expected utility than automated out-of-sight out-of-mind frog moving machinery.
I think the warm-fuzzies from an engineering solution could be quite significant.
Throughout the day, if I had encountered a live or dead frog in my stairwell, my mind might return to the subject of frogs caught in stairwells several times. If I had saved the frog by hand, I would feel some satisfaction (tinged with some cynicism, see here) but also anxiety that I could not always be there for every frog. With the engineering solution, I would feel proud about human ingenuity and happy about all the potential frogs I could be saving any moment. Lots and lots of warm fuzzies.
I would not be able to alter the stairwell in such a fashion. This is a commercial apartment complex with many other people living in the building. The mailboxes are also in this bottom-level stairwell, meaning it gets quite a bit of traffic aside from myself. I reiterate I have never seen another person help a frog, and the ratio has always been 1:1.
Other buildings in the apartment complex apparently also have this problem, as I asked someone who lived in another building if they’d ever seen a dead frog, and they said yes, on occasion, they see them when getting the mail. I did not ask if they saw any live frogs. There are at least 4 identical stairwells per building, and at least 6 buildings adjacent to a pond. This adds to my feelings of “this problem is too big for me.”
When I was a young child my dad was building an extension on our house. He dug a deep trench for the foundations and one morning I came down to find what my hazy memory suggests were thousands of baby frogs from a nearby lake. I spent some time ferrying buckets of tiny frogs from the trench to the top of our driveway in a bid to save them from their fate.
The following morning on the way to school I passed thousands of flat baby frogs on the road. I believe this early lesson may have inured me to the starkly beautiful viciousness of nature.
How wide is the entrance to the stairwell? Could you add a ramp at the sides so the frogs have a chance of getting up without inconveniencing the other people? It would also enable people with bikes to wheel them in easier (if any of the residents store bikes in their flats).
Is there any group/person who represents the views of the residents of the building(s)? Perhaps write a letter to them with the best solution to the problem you think of and let them sort it out?
Otherwise I would probably devise some form of frog capture device, so I could quickly and cleanly remove frogs (alive or dead). Some form of hinged box controlled by a line on a pole.
Edit: Err, read the frequency. Once every 2 weeks doesn’t justify taking a tool with you, Probably just take some gloves and rescue the frogs.