The Green caldron - University Library

May, 1962 17
Immediately I took charge of the situation, because I was a year older and
I had more experience. Besides that we were using my mayonnaise jars.
"I'll go around in front, you stay there," I ordered softly.
As I moved into position, I saw the weeds move and the excitement
increased. When I got in position, we moved in slowly with our hands
cupped and our feet shuffling. Cupped hands made catching the frog easier,
while shuffling the feet caused the frog to jump, revealing his whereabouts.
Our game was less than two feet in front of us, so we dropped to our knees
and gently parted the weeds. There it was, a big one, too—a big disappointment
that is, because before the mighty hunters lay a grass snake, not a
frog. In this situation the hardiest of frog hunters would be discouraged,
but not us ; we caught the snake and put him in one of the jars. With our
snake safely bottled, we continued our search for frogs. Barely five minutes
had passed when suddenly I was startled by a loud splash. The reason the
splash startled me so much was that the splash was caused by my body
hitting the water. I tripped on an old log or something and down I went.
The fall proved valuable, because I just happened to land near a nice big
crab that was in water too shallow to swim in. I proceeded to catch the
"little devil" and place him in the other mayonnaise jar.
While I continued the search for frogs, Glenn went to investigate some
signs of life under a nearby tree. Suddenly he returned with an excited
gleam in his eye.
"Guess what I got, Jer?" he asked gleefully.
My curiosity became unbearable, because he wouldn't show me what he
had. Finally he reached under his sweatshirt and produced a red-winged
blackbird. This was one of the greatest moments of our lives ; a bird, a
real, live bird, and Glenn had caught it. It seemed to have a broken leg, so
we vowed to make it well and keep it for a pet.
As we renewed the frog hunt, we did so with high hopes. We were
almost sure that we would find some frogs. We could hear them croaking,
but, for some reason or other, we weren't seeing anything encouraging.
Suddenly the silence was shattered by the cry of FROG !
Glenn pointed
to the spot where the frog was located. My heart jumped as I saw the big
brown, boy frog. Just as we were about to jump on him and capture him,
a booming voice came across the pasture.
"Jerry," my father shouted, "come home and eat supper."
I turned for a second. It was a tragic second ; our frog escaped into
the deep water.
We finally decided to go home with the game we had captured. We
didn't have any frogs, but we had caught a big grass snake, a crab, a bird
and, when I fell in the water, I caught a cold.