Swimming pools are places of fun and relaxation, as they should be. But to many animals, they can be a death sentence. Fur humans, climbing out of a pool is obviously a breeze.

Smaller animals, however, can’t climb out of a pool should they fall in.

Unfortunately, this is how many of them meet their deaths.

Wildlife biologist Rich Mason learned of the countless frogs, snakes, and other small critters getting stuck in pools.

He’d gotten numerous calls about them from his friends, being the “animal guy” in his circles.

The calls were more or less always the same thing. A reptile or small mammal had gotten stuck or died in a swimming pool. Mason was on retrieval duty whenever this happened.

This problem almost definitely reflected a widespread phenomenon. If this was happening to frogs in Rich’s own area, then it was a safe bet it was happening to frogs in other places too.

It wasn’t just frogs though.

Mason had also seen a fair share of wild turtles, possums, chipmunks, bats, baby birds, and moles meeting the same fate.

“In June of 2004, good friends of mine who lived on a heavily wooded lot near Baltimore, Maryland called me very upset and let me know that a huge number of frogs were dying in their recently built in-ground swimming pool.”

Eventually, Rich began thinking, “Surely there’s got to be some way to prevent this.”

So he played around with ideas.

Rich looked at what solutions were already available. None of them were up-to-par for him. Devices to help small animals climb out of pools already existed, but they were imperfect. Some only worked with specific pool designs, others only worked with bigger animals.

So Rich had to take matters into his own hands. He grabbed some fabric, foam, old tethering devices, and a sewing machine.

He made the prototype of his new device: FrogLog.

He describes testing its effectiveness for the first time.

“For the first few days we did not find any dead animals in the pool; however, we could not tell how effective the device was since there was no way to know how many animals had fallen in. “

What Rich Mason described is known as survivorship bias.

Only those that “Made it” or “Survived” are shown, or not-shown, in a sample. Ideally, however, you want to also know who’s not surviving to really see the whole picture.

It’s a well-known concept many scientists like Mason have to account for, so he came up with a basic method to eliminate this and get the answers he wants.

“To better document the efficiency of this first primitive FrogLog, a funnel trap (similar to a minnow trap) was placed at the top of the device to catch all the animals that climbed up and out of the pool. ”

“The FrogLog was in the pool with the funnel trap for 23 days between August 14th and September 9th 2004. During this period, 47 American toads (Bufo americanus) and 3 green frogs (Rana clamitans) were removed alive from the funnel trap. Two dead American toads were found in the skimmer basket. During this brief test period, the FrogLog was 94% effective at allowing trapped amphibians to climb out of the pool.”

After refining his design, Mason gave some to his friends. The results were fantastic.

FrogLog was a success, and now many people have this critter-saving escape ramp in their pools.

Thousands of frogs, snakes, squirrels, and other small critters have all avoided meeting a grim, watery fate – all thanks to Rich Mason.

Watch FrogLog in action in Rich’s video down below.

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Source: Froglog.us, Rich Mason on YouTube