Frog-giggin' 1987

Frog Giggin’




Frog-Acre is an acre of bogland just off the Warrior River a ways up Cane Creek. It pretty much looks like land until you step out of the boat, then you find out otherwise. You find out that it is a contortion of water lilies and lilly pads wrapped together and tied and covered with algae all over the whole surface of the lake that the creek feeds. One time my beagle, Soupy, -he was called Soupy for the way he did his business when he was a puppy—jumped out of the boat and tried to catch a frog himself. Soupy got all tangled up in the lilies and we finally had to chop him out with our boat paddles. And it seemed that all the frogs just laughed at him the whole time that he was caught and struggling.

Frog Acre is where we usually go when we want to catch us some big frogs. You have to gig the big ones to get any meat on their bones.

Frogs are a strange sort, anyway, and pretty ugly. It’s sort of funny to consider that this bloated green , slimy fellow would make some of the best eatin’ around. And it’s funny that they are closest in relation to humans. I guess that explains it when you see a baby and say, “You’re just cute enough to eat!” But to experience this feast -the frog legs, not the baby—you have to participate in the huntin’. “Cause what good is the meal if you don’t join in on the game?

You have to wake up pretty damn early to catch the frogs. They dislike the heat as much as you and I do, so they pretty much stay in the water after the sun comes up.

So we crawl out of bed at about four-thirty in the mornin’, to to the boatshed, get our hats with the carbide lanterns, our life jackets, our paddles, and of course, our gig. A gig is a long pole, maybe six or seven feet long, with a three-pronged devil’s fork on the end. You have to watch, too, when getting into the boat so that you don’t punch a hole into the bottom of the boat, or that you don’t gig your dog, especially Soupy—or your fellow frog gigger.

Once you’re in the boat, you are ready to go. Now the main thing that you have to do is to be real quiet, the frogs will hear you if you don’t. If you’re far away from where you are going, it’s o.k. to use a small trolling motor to get you there as long as you remember that you must shut it off a good ways before you get to Frog-Acre. You have to be still, too, cause if you bump the sides or the bottom of the boat, then you’ll cause all the frogs to jump off their lily pads and into the water. --Don’t worry though, because you know when to turn off the mother and when to get real quiet. When you round the bend in Cane Creek, you hear the frogs as you move into Frog-Acre. It sounds like thousands of them --and it probably is! You need to listen for the ones with the deep bellowing voices; they make the best eatin’. They are granddaddy bull frogs. Some are as old as I am. -I’ve even seen them as big a cats! And I’m not kidding you either. They could swallow a whole rat and probably some carp for dessert. They make the best eatin’ because they have the most meat on their legs. And the meat just breaks apart in chucks at the calves and thighs. So good, so good.

The reason I ‘m telling you that you have to listen is because you can’t see. It is pitch black on the creek before the sun comes op; and there is a mist as thick as butter and it rise up about fifteen feet over the surface of Frog-Acre.

I particularly like the mist in the morning. It sits all around you and covers your face, and gives a fresh smell to everything around you. And it prepares the trees and foliage for the summer heat. The limbs droop down and touch the water; they are so heavy with dew. My son doesn’t like it though. He’s ten years old and he hates morning anyway. He says that it makes his clothes wet and draws mosquitoes to him. I tell him not to be so sweet. This is God’s time.

Now once you hear the frogs croakin’, you shut down the motor and everything gets as quiet as prayer on Sunday Morning—unless of course you are Church of God, like my wife’s folks.---Except for the frogs—You hear them loud and clear. This is when you light your carbide lanterns.

A smart man thought up the carbide lantern. It has chemicals in it, but we won’t get into that. Just be careful not to burn yourself. IT has a blue-green and yellow flame when you light it and a very strong smell. You begin to appreciate the smell once you get used to it. Sort of a sweet sulfur. And the lamp also warms and dries the mist off your face. See, the lamp is attached to a dish that reflects the light; and you wear it on your cap. That way, wherever you turn your head, you’ve got the light aimed in the right direction. Boys these days want to use flashlights until they realize that a flashlight ties up your hands. They realize it once they drop their first granddaddy off their gig and into the water.

So once you greet the silence, you wait on the calm to take over. You take your paddle to the water, and ever so quietly, you slip it in.

Don’t splash! You have to be an artist to be able to maneuver the paddle over the edge of the boat with one arm and to hold the seven-foot gig in the other. What you then do is ease the boat, ever-so-quietly toward the general direction of the bellowing bullfrog.

Don’t look at him! You’ll scare him into the water, along with every other frog around him. If you’ve got someone else with you, he can hold the gig. As soon as you get into close range—about five feet—off the granddaddy, be quick! Turn your head as quick as you can and look that frog square in the eye. This’ll scare him and stun him. He won’t be able to move. You’ll blind him. Imagine an “X” directly over his heart. That’s your target.

And while you are blinding him, jab him! Jab him hard and quick! That three-pronged devil’s fork will go right in him. He’ll never know what hit him. An “X” over the heart always kills on the spot.

He’ll be yours! You do have to aim for his belly—but that’s most of him anyway.

When you lift him into the boat, you have to hold tight onto that gig—that fat-ass bull frog will slip right off if you don’t. And hold that fork up in the air so that if the frog does slip, he’ll slip further on and not off the gig. Drop that sucker in a bucket and you are ready to go again. Do this about a hundred times before the sun comes up, and you’ll have a mess of frog legs that would feed all of Walker County…so good, so good.