Walking along a boardwalk in the center of a marsh, I suddenly heard a sound that I had never heard before, a strange and eerie squeak. I had no idea of the source of the sound, but a man who was walking by with his family pointed it out to me. It was a frog that had been captured by a snake and was slowly being swallowed whole.
I leaned over the edge of the boardwalk and tried to take some shots of this terrifying spectacle, but there was too much grass between me and the two protagonists in this drama for me to get a really clear shot. The shot below shows the snake working to get past the frog’s hind legs. As you can see, the snake is swallowing the frog beginning with the legs. In a previous post, I showed a green heron swallowing a frog. The heron slid the frog down his throat in a single gulp beginning with the head. The process with the snake was more protracted and therefore more gruesome.
Eventually it was over. I continued on with my day, feeling a mixture of awe and horror for what I had just witnessed.
Frog being swallowed by a snake (click for higher resolution)
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Great timing to capture this shot!
Indeed. It was definitely a case of being in the right place at the right time.
Looks like maybe a leopard frog. It’s amazing the snake could swallow one that size.
I agree. I saw it happen and am still not sure how it did it!
It’s probably a good thing that we can’t translate frog language into ours–I would not want to learn what the poor frog was saying!