Cass Junior High science teacher Marianne Tamosaitis has led more than 1,500 frog dissections over the years—but never one quite like this.

Her seventh-grade students sliced open the belly of a frog May 31 and found a two-inch long mouse.

The mouse—fur, tail and all—was just about big enough to fill the frog’s whole torso. The big eater didn't stop there, either. A beetle joined the mouse in the frog's stomach.

Tamosaitis said she knew the kids would find something unusual inside the frog as soon as she saw how far its belly protruded.

"My assistant recommended I dissect this one, but I knew if I left it for one of the students, it would create a memory that would live forever for that student," she said. "How cool is that!"

The wary student called Tamosaitis over before cutting into the stomach to make sure he had identified it correctly. He was ecstatic when he discovered the mouse, she said.

Cass purchases frogs that Boreal Scientific raises in captivity for dissections. Boreal did not respond to a call asking how the heck this particular frog met the mouse.

“We have no idea how the frog would have eaten a mouse,” fellow Cass science teacher Susan Paszkowski said. “Normally only insects are found in the stomachs.”

Even though the mouse was a shocking find for the students, mouse eating actually isn’t that unusual for bullfrogs, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

“They will attempt to eat anything that moves,” the DNR’s website said. That includes other bullfrogs, snakes, small mammals and—major gross-out alert—baby ducks. 

The kids, unsurprisingly, were “elated” with the find, Paszkowski said. Tamosaitis displayed the mouse for the rest of the day so her other classes could see it.

If you want to see a video of a frog eating a mouse, you can find plenty on YouTube. I was too squeamish to watch one, so you’ll have to fend for yourself if you’re into viewing this kind of thing.

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