There is a drain in our driveway that I step over every morning. I’ve never paid any attention to it until one recent morning when, as I walked over it, I heard the ‘plop’ of something falling into the water.
I thought I had dropped something into the drain. I looked in but didn’t see anything other than a mess of leaves, twigs and some water, so I walked away hoping it wasn’t anything important.

The following morning and almost every morning afterwards I would hear that ‘plop’ every time I walked over the drain and, so, of course I knew that there was something – likely a frog – living in there.
I tried several times, unsuccessfully, to sneak up on it. No matter how stealthily I approached, trying not to cast any shadows, whenever I got near enough to look in: Plop!
Today I decided to give something different a try.
Using my phone as a remote shutter release for my Olympus, I rested the camera face-down on the grate, covering it with a plastic bag because of the light rain falling
Then I walked a few feet away and waited, using the phone as a view-finder.
I waited a good fifteen minutes without any guarantee that the frog – or whatever it was – would be so obliging as to place himself where my lens was pointing. But I was rewarded for my patience with two halfway decent shots of my new neighbour.


The photos of the drain and setup were all taken with my iPhone X-R
The photos of the frog and interior of the drain were taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M5III using a 14-42mm lens (set on auto at 14mm)
Plastic bag courtesy The Greenwich Time. Probably the most useful thing I’ve gotten out of our local paper in some time.
Nothing wrong with solving a little mystery once in a while. 😎
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