I grew up living just up the hill from a swamp. Couple this with the 5 boys I lived next door to, and there is bound to be some great adventures.
I would get my red wagon, the rusty one with all of the duck tape on the left wheel, and trudge down the hill with Jeffrey and David. We'd dug under the fence, or walk right thru a large drain pipe. That drain pipe was like a grand entrance to an amazing world. Who the hell cared about which shoes you were wearing? We had swamp creatures to deal with, and you never knew if that creature, the 6 foot one, David told us about would pounce on us at any time. We were all always on alert reading to run screaming up the hill at any moment. This is what made us brave.
We'd take a gallon milk carton open the end to form a square box, and begin hunting for baby frogs. This always happened of course in the summer, when it was hot and smelly. Hey, this was a swamp! There were smells none of us recognized, I remember them even today. Have you ever seen a buch of frog eggs floating in a gelatenous bunch in murky water? It was gold. We knew there would be hundreds, thousands, or millions of babies nearby. We would load up maybe 4 milk cartons full of inch long baby frogs, put them in the red wagon, and head up the hill. Then we would proceed to blanket the neighborhood with the babies. Come August the concerts from our front and backyards were amazing! I'd go to sleep every night listening to all of my friends croaking their harmonies. Symphony's in the dark. By August the babies were HUGE, great fat mounds of slimey fatness. Always on the alert, we would stoop to find a big daddy under a freshly watered fern. I would lovingly hold them, my fear of warts never stronger than my love for feeling their fat silky tummies.
This is when one of the boys taught me how to hypnotize a frog. You grab it, flip it over and run a finger along it's belly the full length of it's body. It immediately goes into a hypnotique suspension. Sometimes they peed while in this state...it was a sheer joy and left us all screeching in delight.
At the end of the summer it was always so sad to see a squished frog in the road, flattened by a car we did the only thing we could, played dried up dead lattened frog frisbee.
I think kids need to play with frogs more now days. Discovering the wonders of nature gave me a deep respect for animals, and their amazing worlds. I can be found even today watching a mongoose documentary on channel 48 or whatever. It's really great to use technology and video games for dexterity, but what about looking into the eyes of a huge bullfrog.....we just might be missing something today so magical, so special, and so fantstic.....don't you think?
17 February 2009
Frisbee with flattened frogs
I grew up living just up the hill from a swamp. Couple this with the 5 boys I lived next door to, and there is bound to be some great adventures.
I would get my red wagon, the rusty one with all of the duck tape on the left wheel, and trudge down the hill with Jeffrey and David. We'd dug under the fence, or walk right thru a large drain pipe. That drain pipe was like a grand entrance to an amazing world. Who the hell cared about which shoes you were wearing? We had swamp creatures to deal with, and you never knew if that creature, the 6 foot one, David told us about would pounce on us at any time. We were all always on alert reading to run screaming up the hill at any moment. This is what made us brave.
We'd take a gallon milk carton open the end to form a square box, and begin hunting for baby frogs. This always happened of course in the summer, when it was hot and smelly. Hey, this was a swamp! There were smells none of us recognized, I remember them even today. Have you ever seen a buch of frog eggs floating in a gelatenous bunch in murky water? It was gold. We knew there would be hundreds, thousands, or millions of babies nearby. We would load up maybe 4 milk cartons full of inch long baby frogs, put them in the red wagon, and head up the hill. Then we would proceed to blanket the neighborhood with the babies. Come August the concerts from our front and backyards were amazing! I'd go to sleep every night listening to all of my friends croaking their harmonies. Symphony's in the dark. By August the babies were HUGE, great fat mounds of slimey fatness. Always on the alert, we would stoop to find a big daddy under a freshly watered fern. I would lovingly hold them, my fear of warts never stronger than my love for feeling their fat silky tummies.
This is when one of the boys taught me how to hypnotize a frog. You grab it, flip it over and run a finger along it's belly the full length of it's body. It immediately goes into a hypnotique suspension. Sometimes they peed while in this state...it was a sheer joy and left us all screeching in delight.
At the end of the summer it was always so sad to see a squished frog in the road, flattened by a car we did the only thing we could, played dried up dead lattened frog frisbee.
I think kids need to play with frogs more now days. Discovering the wonders of nature gave me a deep respect for animals, and their amazing worlds. I can be found even today watching a mongoose documentary on channel 48 or whatever. It's really great to use technology and video games for dexterity, but what about looking into the eyes of a huge bullfrog.....we just might be missing something today so magical, so special, and so fantstic.....don't you think?
