rana

This is Rana. She's a froggy sock monster.

I made her this week as a gift for a new friend. She was a little more complicated than most of the other sock monsters I've made, because she actually has toes. Not quite all the toes she should have, so maybe she's having some problems with parasites, I don't know. But I really enjoyed making her boggly eyes, and sewing the froggy mouth.



She has kind of a Mona Lisa smile, don't you think?

You may already know that around the globe, frogs and other amphibians are in serious trouble. About a third of the world's amphibian species are in serious decline. Scientists think that more than 160 species have gone extinct in the last few decades.

There are a lot of reasons: habitat loss, global climate change, diminished resistance to pathogens in the environment, and of course all the nasty pollutants in the water bodies where amphibians live. Scientists are not only finding that frog populations are declining, but that freaky things are happening to frogs - missing and extra limbs, hermaphroditism, and immunicological problems.

I'm doing my part by making frogs out of old socks - but somehow I don't think that's going to cut it.