Old Town 11-year-old finds unusual frog

The same family that caught the piebald bullhead fish in the Penobscot River in early June has found another natural oddity.

A green frog that is blue where it should be green.

Sarah Jane Webber, 11, whose twin Marley was involved in the piebald catfish adventure, found the frog in a road ditch near the family’s camp on Chemo Pond on Saturday night. The pond borders Bradley, Eddington and Clifton.

“It’s the coolest frog I’ve ever caught,” Sarah said Tuesday.

Just so the significance of her statement would not be lost, her father Josh Webber made the point that his daughter catches a lot of frogs.

Blue frogs are unusual in Maine, according to a state biologist. Konor Dyer of Strong found one in 2017 when he was 14, and two others were reported to the state f rom central and southern Maine in 2021.

The random color mutation is known as axanthism.

The normal skin color of a green frog is a combination of yellow and blue pigments. In a frog with the mutation, the skin is blue wherever the frog lacks the yellow pigment, said state biologist Derek Yorks, wildlife biologist for reptiles, amphibians and turtles with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, on Tuesday.

Yorks has seen one green frog that lacked blue pigment so far in his career. Its skin was yellow, he said.

He didn’t have statistics on what the probability of a blue frog is, let alone a yellow one, but said the mutation is not unheard of. Yorks usually sees at least one a year now, but he observes thousands of frogs as part of his work. The most he’s seen in any one year was three, and before that hadn’t seen one for about five years.

This year, he saw one in Standish and heard of another besides the frog that Sarah Webber found.

A frog with no pigmentation would be an albino, he said, but he’s never seen one. Albinos stand out to predators and don’t last long, but blue or yellow frogs can blend in with their surroundings better, he said.

This is the second oddly pigmented creature the Webbers have found. In early June, Josh and Sarah Webber were fishing catch and release with some of their five children at the shore of the Penobscot River when they caught the black and white bullhead, also known as hornpout or catfish in Maine.

After some quick photos, the family released the fish back into the river.

“We are all animal lovers and love finding cool critters and helping them. I’ve even stopped traffic on Bradley Road to make sure a turtle got across. It’s just what we do, and how I want [our kids] to grow up as well — to help the turtle get across the road. We all need help sometimes,” Webber said.