Fish and Frogs





A green spotted frog appeared in my fish pond on Saturday. This reminded me that there are as many frog tales in our family as fish tales.Walking around the ponds as children was somenthing my brother and I did often. I knew each blade of grass, lump of dirt and rock around the ponds. Looking in the grass for bullfrogs was one of the things we did as we were older. My brother had discovered that thing you do at night when you stick the frogs to kill and cook the legs. I never remember anyone ever cooking the first frogleg in our house. I think the frog killing thing at night was just a way for them mean ass boys to find a way to stay out at night. This for sure as always gave him something to show me when my brother and I were in the pastures wondering around. He knew more about everything than I did to hear him tell it. In heat of the day we were walking around my favorite pond. This was the pond that was just beside Gilbert Krecher's Pine Thicket. This is what we called the crop of pine trees that to me were the beginning of The Corum Hollow. It was much cooler there to pass the day than anywhere else, unless we were going on to the branch. That one day we had just got to the far side of the pond. We were looking for frogs, because Kenny was an expert on frogs now. He was pulling the grass back looking to show me the good frogs for froglegs. He pulled back some grass, with me right behind him. There it was the biggest frog in the world. It was at least a foot from his nose to it's butt. Mister frog expert ran from this frog as I stood amazed knowing or thinking I knew that a frog didn't bite. The fact that he was so scared to this day makes me laugh. His daughter did not get his fear of frogs. She as a very small child loved frogs. Well I say loved them. She picked them up everytime she saw one. She loved to play with them. With the exception of the one that was outside following a Sunday morning church service. We had just been let out and were standing as usual talking and watching the kids play. The frog hopped onto the sidewalk and my little neice with her shiney Sunday shoes raised her foot and stomped the frog flat on the sidewalk.

 The frog I discovered on Saturday was still there at 5:30 am this morning. This means the frog is too big for the gold fish to swallow. Unlike an unlucky fish that was put in the pond a few months ago. The Bass that had been in my pond for seven years was a good ten inches long. There was the Bass, a brim and two of those catfish that are goldfish really. The new catfish/goldfishy things were smaller than the ones that already inhabited the pond. The idea was to release the small goldfish from the zip-lock bag slowly, to get them used to the water in the pond. Just as the bag was opened the Bass struck the goldfish as if it was bait and a great meal for him. Grabbing the smaller fish out of the Big-Bad-Bass's mouth was all My could do. He jerked him out of the fishes mouth before he could swallow it. It still has bruises on his side, but is alive and well in the house aquarium. We were trying to feed them alot, so they would be too big for a Bass to eat. Then a tragic thing happened. The ponds rubber liner started to leak; this meant draining and redoing the pond. This also meant taking out the four tenents of the pond. Carefully placed in water from the pond, one would think it was safe for all four of them. The Koi made it fine, but the Brim and Bass died two days after they were placed back in the pond.

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