Hoppers at home: Hopping from lily pads to living rooms

They may not snuggle up to you or fetch the morning paper – but frogs can be ridiculously cute and surprisingly low-maintenance.
 
And with hundreds of rear-able species, each with its own quirks and quarks, it’s not difficult to find the perfect croak-mate to match your eccentric self.

For instance: Most frogs don’t take well to handling, but if you crave cuddle-time with your pet kermit, try the lovely Amazon milk frog. They’re interactive little hoppers, and are one of the few species that don’t mind a bit of touchy-feely with their owners.

Or, if you’re enigmatic and reclusive, you may find a kindred spirit with the Vietnamese mossy frog. It looks exactly like a clod of moss and spends much of its time hiding under rocks and plants.

Pet frogs range from tiny (some dart frogs are the size of your thumbnail) to large (Goliath frogs, the size of a large house cat), noisy (a Coqui’s mating call hits the decibels of a lawnmower) to silent, expensive (the very, very cute lemur leaf frog, RM1,200 each) to absolutely free-of-charge (scout out your nearest rainwater puddle). They don’t need to be walked or groomed, and won’t chew your favourite slippers. So let’s go get us some frogs!
 
Ah but wait, wait – surely it isn’t that easy. Aren’t frogs these hypersensitive, fragile creatures whose entire population dies at the slightest change in pH? What if I accidentally coughed on them?

Frog expert Chau Chun Seng practically leapt to his feet in a passionate effort to explain. He’s the founder and owner of Malaysia’s first specialty frog shop, called – wait for it – The Frog Shop. Together with its partner company, Riumz, a vivarium supplier, Chun Seng and his team provide an all-in-one service for frog-nobbers new and old.  

“Yes, they are indeed hyper-osmotic. Anything that touches their skin is immediately absorbed into their bodies, so they can get very sick, very quickly. Here, wash your hands – but don’t use soap,” he said, motioning to the faucet. He soberly told of two mossy frogs that recently died when Kuala Lumpur’s haze was at its worst.



The key to successfully rearing a frog, says Chun Seng, is investing in a good vivarium. He gestured expansively to the beautiful vivariums which adorn the premises of The Frog Shop. It’s easy to imagine them in the lobbies of swanky corporate offices and high-end shopping malls.

“A properly set-up vivarium is a functioning ecosystem, it keeps itself clean. You don’t need to do anything thereafter except feed the frogs - costs about RM40 per month,” said Chun Seng.  He scooped up a small pile of pinhead crickets, added a spoonful of powdered supplements then shook the concoction like a bartender whipping up a cosmopolitan.

“Watch this,” he lifted the lid on a blue poison dart frog den. The frogs hopped out from their hiding places and waited expectantly. He sprinkled the dazed crickets liberally over the moist rocks and an utterly captivating feeding frenzy occurred.

After you determine the frog species you want, The Frog Shop team can then deck out the tank with heating lights and misters set just so to make sure your web-footed friends can bask in the light, humidity and temperatures of their homeland. Then it’s a careful evaluation of suitable rocks and plants that not only look pretty, but provide great circulation and bacterial-chomping properties.

The set up cost isn’t to be croaked at, though. A standard vivarium to house four frogs costs between RM1,300 to RM1,500. This excludes the frogs themselves and the misters. Misters are optional - you can choose to buy a sprayer from your local hardware shop and administer the faux rain yourself, or you can get a top of the range one that does all the thinking for you, for about RM700.



Chun Seng started both The Frog Shop and Riumz late last year, and business is doing well. His frogs, sourced mostly from the US, are 90% booked out before they even hop onto our shores.

His love affair with frogs and other less conventional pets began when he brought his first toad home at age 5. By the time he was in his late teens, his personal zoo had expanded to include other frogs, lizards and about 40 snakes.

To please his parents, he dutifully trained and worked as a financial auditor. But after half a decade he could no longer ignore the call of the wild. He ditched the financials and started up Reptiles Malaysia, providing advisory services and supplying exotic animals to the global market. The Frog Shop and Riumz are his first commercial business ventures.

Of all the animals he could have chosen to market, why frogs?

He fired up his laptop and scrolled through hundreds of images before stopping at a picture of a lemur leaf frog.

“Keroppi comes alive,” he said.  God had seen fit to bestow this tiny frog with absurdly oversized eyes, making it look very similar to the much-loved Japanese cartoon character.   

He explained that his wife was the polar opposite of himself when it came to his strange pets – she didn’t like them at all.

“But when she saw this little guy, she was smitten. That’s when I knew that this frog business had a good chance of making it.”