The great Alaska invasion of Pacific chorus frogs is over, and as it turned out, only one invader was captured and turned over to the authorities.

Maybe you've forgotten about the the frog invasion, but it was headline news in the state in early December. First came Anchorage's daily newspaper with a front page story about how sneaky frogs hiding in Christmas trees shipped north from Washington state could hop free, hide out until spring, and then infect with an alien fungus native frogs emerging from hibernation.

Yes, this might now sound like that silliness of swabbing Alaska bird butts for avian flu back in 2006. But, like the bird flu, the frog invasion was serious in its time. Funny how this works. The feds spent $4 million swabbing bird butts for flu when it was pretty clear to most reasonable observers on what wings H5N1 was likely to arrive in Alaska.

The same wings that took H1N1 -- the swine flu -- to remote Little Diomede Island earlier this winter: Aircraft wings. The global transportation system has become a lot more efficient than nature in moving everything from apples to zirconium around the planet.

Just ask those Pacific chorus frogs.

They arrived in Anchorage as unwanted gifts in imported Christmas trees. Upon learning of their arrival, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game promptly put out a press release urging everyone to check trees for "amphibious hitchhikers they may be unaware they purchased.''

The press-release-driven local media simply picked up the story and ran with it.

"About the fourth reporter to call me did ask, 'Do you think we're blowing this out of proportion?'" Tracey Gotthardt of Fish and Game said this week. Gotthardt is the zoologist to whom everyone in the state was directed to send their invasive frogs, dead or alive.

How many did she get?

Zero, she said, adding that one was turned in to the University of Alaska. Gotthardt admits to some skepticism about the danger of the frogs in frozen Alaska. Maybe, she said, if someone had kept one alive all winter, and another person had kept a member of the opposite sex alive all winter. And maybe if they'd gotten free in the spring and found each other. And maybe....well, you get the idea.

But that didn't stop the invasive frog story from hopping to the next level in Anchorage.

No sooner had the newspaper made the frog a front-page issue than KTUU-TV news jumped into the fray with a story warning the advice given by state officials on what to do with the frogs was inhumane.

Yes, that's right, the state advised people to kill the frogs with Orajel when every right thinking American knows the way you kill a frog is to run over it with the tire of your car. OK, just joking.That's the way most people kill most frogs, but that's apparently not the way you're supposed to kill them if you find them hopping about the house at Christmas.

"What's tearing (reptile rescuer Maria von Koehnen) up Friday is something she saw on the news the night before,'' KTUU reported, "a warning to watch out for frogs native to the Pacific Northwest on Christmas trees. For von Koehnen, the problem isn't the frogs -- it's what the state's asked people to do with them if they find them.

"Von Koehnen says she's been involved in reptile rescue for years, and that the state's suggestion to put Orajel on the frogs' heads is exactly the wrong thing to do.

"'They start having massive seizures,' von Koehnen said. 'It's just like giving someone an overdose of medication they're allergic to, and not doing a thing about it. That upset me so -- I was so livid!'"

Von Koehnen suggested that to save the poor frogs from suffering, people should take them live to the "professionals" at "Fish and Game. Let Fish and Game deal with them.'' Fish and Game would, of course, have Orajaled them, or fed them to a snake, or maybe hit them with a hammer.

Just kidding, of course.

It all does sound sort of funny now, Gotthardt admitted, but invasive species are a serious business.