FrogLog: Animal Escape Ramp for Swimming Pools

For those of us who happen to be lucky enough to own a backyard swimming pool, summertime is the best. Having a private little body of water to dunk your feet – or whole body – in a chill out in the hot summer months can be a bliss.Show more

For the small animals that come to your backyard to visit, however, pools can be a literal death trap. That is why marine biologist Rich Mason went out to change this unfortunate occurrence with a very simple, yet ingenious and effective invention - the FrogLog.

On his official website, Mason wrote: “In June of 2004, good friends who had recently built an in-ground swimming pool on their wooded lot near Baltimore, Maryland, called to let me know frogs were dying in their pool”. Troubled by what has been happening to the poor wild creatures and by what his friends were enduring, Mason decided to construct a sort of life raft that one can attach to the sides of their in-ground swimming pool. That way, which ever unfortunate little critter found themselves in the water, they would float or swim towards the contraption and climb back to the safety of dry land.

The FrogLog consists of an inflatable platform with a mesh skirt attached which goes in the water, a weighted pouch that you put on the lip of the pool and a mesh ramp that connects the two ends. The first prototypes of the FrogLog were made entirely by the hands of Rich Mason. Now, every little creature that visits your backyard pool will get a second chance to survive!