A Bad Habit

Growing up I discovered that I was burdened with a truly bad habit for causing mischief. This problem seemed to intensify during the summer months when I didn’t have school to distract me. Looking back, I think it was one of the reasons hearing the words June, July, and August caused my mom to shudder involuntarily.

There were many, as Mom called them, shenanigans, but none would be more infamous than what was referred to as the Great Frog Roundup. I was in sixth grade when my cousin Chris and I had the idea to collect as many frogs as possible in one day.

We knew we would have to get an early start if we were going to reach our self-imposed goal of 1,000 frogs. I’m not sure what made us think that we were going to find 1,000 frogs, but at the time it seemed to be a worthwhile goal. Plans were made to meet up at our tree fort at six the next morning. Mom later confessed that the fact that I was out of bed so early in the summer should have been an indication that something was afoot.

We met up at the tree fort and quickly realized that neither of us had been wise enough at this early morning hour to bring anything to collect the frogs in. We both dashed off to our houses to grab something for the frog transportation. I returned with a five gallon bucket and Chris had an egg carton.

Upon seeing the egg carton I realized how brilliant the idea to use the carton was. The egg carton was an easy way to keep up with how many frogs we had incarcerated. For every load we brought back we just had to calculate by twelve to keep a total of our numbers. My math teacher, Mr. Nord, would have been especially proud to know that I was multiplying in the off season.

Unfortunately, the brilliance of the plan was undermined with the yelling of his mom to bring back the egg carton. It seemed that Chris had unloaded the eggs from the carton directly onto a refrigerator shelf, which doesn’t sound too bad of an idea except for the fact when his mom, my Aunt Nell, opened the door half the eggs decided to make a break for it… literally (and figuratively).

Realizing that the bucket was going to be the sole source for collecting the specimens, we then became a little sidetracked with what needed to be in the bucket. I argued the merits of only including grass and sticks; Chris was hung up providing some type of water feature for the frogs. We decided to compromise and not put anything into the bucket unless it was a frog.

Chris deferred to my judgement as far as where to do all our searching. My claim to have the best sense of frog-location was renowned by everyone who lived in the valley. This was a skill that up until now, I thought would not have any significant use other than finding Poison Dart tree frogs for our yet to be accomplished trip into the Amazon rainforest.

Within an hour we had what would later become to be a term used to describe the beginnings of a bad idea- a bucket full of frogs. But at this point in the history of that phrase it meant just that- a bucket full of frogs. The second phase of the roundup was the mass storage of the 1,000 frogs.

Knowing that the frogs would be in need of a cool place out of the sunlight, I knew the answer was to put them under my house. Our house was built off the ground and was situated on pylons of concrete blocks with underpinning that ran around the bottom to block the view of the crawl space underneath. Chris and I eased our first load under the house, dumped the bucket of frogs out, and headed back out on the hunt.

Stopping only to eat lunch, which we were forced to eat on the porch, because apparently the state of cleanliness of our clothes left something to be desired, we managed to haul back four more buckets full of frogs. We would have gotten more, but we got caught up in the distraction of taking a dead raccoon we found and tying a rope to it so that it would swing out over the road when cars passed by.

Satisfied with ourselves, regardless of the fact that we were around 950 frogs off our goal, we spent the rest of the afternoon planning what to do with the 50 frogs we did have. The leading idea was to create a frog army, closely followed by that of a frog circus. With the sun quickly fading we put off the decision until the next day. Chris headed home and I went inside.

Predicting the army idea would win out, I spent the rest of the evening planning out the ranks for the frogs (Frogent for Sargent, Leaporal for Corporal all to be led by Captain Croaker).

That night, after everyone had gone to bed, I discovered the frog was truly a cold blooded creature. Resentful, yes frogs can harbor resent, the frogs had through some sort of contemplation all agreed to begin croaking at the same time just as everyone laid down to sleep.

The sound of 50 frogs under the house croaking echoed through the house and came as quite the surprise. Mom calling me to come see her was significantly less surprising.

As it turned out the number 1,000 did turn up after all. That was the number of spiders I saw while crawling on my belly under my house in the middle of the night trying to find every one of those frogs. Chris asked me the next day, while he was thanking me for keeping him out of it, if I was scared of all the spiders. My reply was that I was more scared of what was just outside the crawlspaces telling me to, “Not come out until I found them all.”