B.C. vet pulls large coin from ‘stupid’ frog that swallowed it

The owner of a pixie frog named Juan rushed from Squamish to Dewdney Animal Hospital in Maple Ridge after the little frog swallowed a big coin.

A little frog has a new lease on life after a B.C. veterinarian pulled a large piece of currency out of its abdomen last weekend.

Juan the pixie frog was rushed from Squamish to Dewdney Animal Hospital in Maple Ridge, one of few facilities that treats exotic pets, after the amphibian ingested a 50 pence coin.

The reason why Juan mistook a metal coin for a delicious meal is simply a poor body-to-brain ratio, to put it scientifically.

“Juan is a living example of too few brain cells, too big a body,” Dr. Adrian Walton, owner and lead vet at Dewdney Animal Hospital told CTV News.

“I’m not trying to insult frogs, but they’re really, really stupid. They have this simple reflex that if anything moves in front of them, they try to eat it.”

The coin took up about 20 per cent of the frog’s abdomen, Walton said. The otoscope the animal hospital had on hand was too short to get down Juan’s throat, so the vet had to call for backup from endoscopist Dr. Eugene Gorodetsky, who travels the province removing all manner of swallowed objects from all manner of pets.

Gorodetsky is the star of new reality TV series “My Pet Ate What!?” which premiers on CTV Wild this weekend.

The first step was to sedate Juan, which was a more complex task than expected. There are thousands of frog species and no guidance on how to anesthetize each one, so the team had to make educated guesses, Walton explained.

They started with one injectable anesthetic that made the pixie sleepy, but not enough. Vets then tried putting a fish anesthetic on his skin so Juan could absorb it, and eventually injecting the drug for fish into his abdomen did the trick.

“Within a couple of minutes, Juan was asleep enough that we could literally take a giant camera and put it down his throat and grab the coin,” he said.

It took about 45 minutes to get the frog asleep, but only three to pull the coin out.

Walton says Juan is the fourth frog he’s had to retrieve a swallowed object from—the others ingested socks and toys.

“I cannot reiterate enough, frogs are dumb. Big body, little tiny brain,” he said.

According to the frog’s owner, Juan and his tiny brain are recovering well.