First Grade Frog Races

Every year the first graders have a frog race as one of their units of study. As you can see Jalen's frog would not leave the start line. We found the frog the night before the race under a roll of field carpet behind the university football field. It was a very cool night so he seemed a little sluggish when we first got him but as he warmed up he became active. As he tried to climb the sides of the plastic jar we had him in one of his legs would kind of flutter trying to get traction and that would make Jalen say " look Jackson, my frog is tap dancing" and then Jalen would bust out laughing. I don't know why that was funny but it was.
Here is the classic portrait with Jalen and his frog before he let him go back to the wild outdoors.

One of the things I love about blogging is that as I tell current stories it reminds me of stories from my past.

I am remembering being probably 4 years old and my Mom calling me in from the back yard because she needed me. As I came in she showed me a frog not unlike the one Jalen is holding in the picture above. My Mom was a nurse so she was tough but as she had that doubled up paper towel in her hand and she would reach down and with all of her nerve try to grab that frog it would hop and that would just freak her out. She looked over at me and asked if I would grab that frog and put it back outside where it belonged. I did, but I have never forgotten the moment when I realized my Mom was truly afraid of something.

My Grand Dad built a pond out in the pasture and stocked it with catfish when I was a little kid. When I was older I would go and fish by myself. We would tie the rods in milk buckets that my Grand Dad had dug into the banks of the pond. After putting out two or three rods I would grab my bb gun and go looking for frogs to shoot at. One summer there was a bumper crop of frogs. There were so many frogs that they were just stacked up on top of each other. I shot 400 frogs one afternoon and the reason I know that is that my bb gun would hold 400 bb's and i ran out of bb's. My Grand Dad would shoot down the bank with a shot gun and then take a big yard broom and sweep the frogs out into the water. We had a bunch of turtles that summer as well. It was only that one year but I don't think I will ever forget all those frogs. Made me wonder about Moses and the plague of Frogs in Egypt.

A couple of years ago we had been shopping in Little Rock and decided to eat supper at Cracker Barrel in NLR. After we ate, I walked out and sat in a rocking chair while Julie looked around the gift shop. Josie spotted a tree frog on the arm of one of the rocking chairs and wanted to take it home. I went in and the hostess gave me a to go box and we got the frog and took him home. We put him in a big plastic jar with some grass and a tree brach to live on. After a couple of days he was not looking good so we went to the pet store to find out what frogs eat. We got a little box of baby crickets and fed those to him and he was happy again. After another week we took him back to the pet store and the owner said he would just put the crickets straight into the jar is she wanted. He put in about 5 crickets and then Julie and the kids ran to Wal-Mart to grab a couple of things. When they came back out the frog had croaked. he had eaten all of the crickets and the last one was only half eaten. It was a sad end to our pet frog.