ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Forget the plastic icicles, brightly colored balls and tinsel.
Some Christmas trees for sale in the Anchorage area are adorned with something truly different this holiday season — live Pacific Chorus frogs.
While the small frogs are very cute, measuring 1 to 2 inches with lovely moss- colored green sides and black spots, state officials are asking residents to practice some tough love. If you find a Christmas tree frog, kill it.
That’s because the cute frogs — whose joyful chorus is often used for movie soundtracks — could be carrying some ugly viruses and fungi, including chytrid fungus, which is devastating amphibians around the world.
A spokesman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said it’s not that Alaskans are heartless, but it’s a matter of protecting their own.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is suggesting two methods of dispatch: death by a dab of Orajel applied to the head (the tooth desensitizer apparently knocks them out for good), or putting the little critter in a plastic bag and placing it in the freezer.
Decades overdue
47 Years overdue for an LP by pop singer Julius La Rosa, checked out of the library in East Peoria, Ill. $871
Applicable fine, if the library knew the scofflaw — but officials don’t because it was returned anonymously
Conviction cramps teenager’s style
A Wisconsin teenager will need legal permission to date girls for the next three years after he was convicted of fleeing to Tennessee with his girlfriend in a stolen car.
Jordan S. Christensen, 19, of Appleton was sentenced Friday to one year in jail and three years’ probation. Outagamie County Judge John Des Jardins has ordered “no dating of the opposite sex without permission of your probation agent.”
4-year-old boy found drinking in a dress
Tennessee investigators say a 4-year-old boy was found roaming his neighborhood in the night, drinking beer and wearing a little girl’s dress taken from under a neighbor’s Christmas tree.
The child’s mother, April Wright, 21, said the boy “wants to go to jail because that’s where his daddy is.” She says she and the boy’s father are divorcing. The boy was taken to a hospital and treated for alcohol consumption.
