The story of the Frog

This story predates Lee by many years but it is a funny one so decided to put it on the main blog since not everyone knows about the other blog.

Friends on Facebook talking about frog stories made me think of this one involving a frog many years ago. My girls were 9, 8, 5, and newborn. Being the tyrant of a mother that I was, I put a lot of responsibility on the two older ones. Well they weren’t afraid of frogs per se however at the time we were living in West Palm Beach. I don’t know if it was something in the air, water or what but they had the biggest frogs I have EVER seen anywhere on the face of this earth. My first husband was working shift work at the time and was due home at 12 or 12:30 or somewhere there about. I remember going into my closet without putting on the light and something (or so I thought) fell off the shelf. But when it fell it fell horizontally not vertically. I says to myself, “Self this is not right! Things do not fall horizontally they fall straight down.” So I put on the light, looked around and on the wall there sat the biggest green rain frog I have ever seen in my life. Well as I said my girls weren’t afraid of frogs so I rousted them out of bed and said come catch this frog and throw him out the door. The two older girls got up and came into my bedroom. We were living in a small trailer at the time. Sort of camping out while their Daddy was working out of town. Well they looked at the frog had a summit conference and decided it was indeed the biggest frog any of us had ever seen. So the oldest one snuck up on the culprit and he jumped. Well when he jumped I would venture to guess from his snout to his toes all stretched out he must have been a foot long. They shrieked and ran back. I said look I’ll give you $0.50 to get him out of here. NO WAY! I upped the ante to $1.00. NO WAY. I went all the way to $5.00. NO WAY! At this point I was getting frantic. It was only around 10:00 and Daddy wasn’t due home for 2 – 3 hours. I can’t stay in this house with this GIANT FROG. I shrieked at the kids. Look you get this frog out of this house or I am going to beat your butts. As I said I wasn’t a model mother (but ya know I raised some pretty darned good kids) Well they thought and discussed and somewhere along the way they decided to get the mop bucked and trap the frog against the wall. As luck would have it by now he was sitting on my bedroom curtains. They were the little café rod kind of curtains. So one of the girls (don’t remember which one) trapped him in the bucket. Then she said what do I do now. I said you are going to hold him prisoner until your Daddy gets home to deal with him. She wailed I can’t hold this frog for 2 hours. So we put our heads together and after telling her to hold him tight I went up, took the curtains, rod and all off the hooks, wrapped it down around the bucket, the other one opened the door and we threw him out the door. When my husband came home he asked what a bucket and a curtain was doing out in the yard. I said never mind. Just go out, shake the curtain out real good and bring it all back in the house. Sometimes I wonder how my poor kids survived me as a parent and if my husband ever wondered at the strange things that happened when he was at work.