Teen Time

Jumping Calaveras

In Calaveras, California frogs compete for trophies.

Jumping Calaveras

“Only boys are any good at catching frogs,” I heard my older brother, Tommy, say. I felt my face turn red. My hands clenched up, and I was ready to slug it out with him, but Mom kept preaching about how I had to act like a lady now that I was nine, so I didn’t attack. Instead I reached down and gathered up a handful of mucky mud – the kind that was just the right consistency for making pies. I wasn’t thinking of making one of them, however. I was listening to Tommy, and that mud was getting so hot in my hand as I got madder and madder, why it was startin’ to bake. I figured in a minute more I’d have a brick to throw at him, and then he wouldn’t talk any more about how girls didn’t know a good jumper from an old, lazy bullfrog.

Now, the truth of it is that I’ve never been all that interested in frogs before. That was my parents’ fault ‘cause they’d managed to give birth to me and my brother in Calaveras County. If you’ve never heard of the place, then you don’t know nothin’ about Mark Twain and you know even less about frogs, ‘cause this place is famous. Mom says people from all those foreign countries come here to see our competition, and last year almost 40,000 tourists poured in just to watch a bunch of frogs race.

It’s because of the popularity of frogs that I don’t have much interest in them. Every shop has a ceramic frog in the window. There’s bronze frogs on every sidewalk and people wear frog jewelry, frog shirts, frog hats, and frog socks. It’s enough to turn anyone against the poor, little green critters. The whole thing was just getting’ out of hand. At least that’s what I told my dad last Saturday when he took me into Valley City for pancakes. It was plumb disgusting. Every pancake on the menu had some cutesy name: Tommy got Freckled Hoppers which had little speckles of chocolate. Dad got Rosie the Ribiter,. (That was the name of the frog that in 1986 jumped twenty-one feet.) She rated a strawberry compote with whipped cream and a chocolate piece of candy that was supposed to be her trophy. Dad practically licked the plate clean when he finished. I chose Froggy Green Pancakes ‘cause I wanted to see what green pancakes tasted like. (No different than regular ones.)

As we ate, Tommy kept mouthing off about how he was going to win the contest this year. I didn’t pay him much attention. With 2,000 bullfrogs competing, and all of them bigger and better than anything he could round up back at our pond, I didn’t figure he had much of a chance. There was a guy from Oregon who always brought most of the winners. He drove a whole semi-trailer full of them into town each year and people rented his frogs just for the contest.

But now listening to Tommy telling my cousin, Danny, all those lies about girls being AFRAID of a silly old frog, why I suddenly dropped my handful of mud, and I turned around and walked off. I’d decided to show Tommy that a girl could do anything a boy could do.

I forgot about being in a dress and how I was supposed to go in and help Mom set the table. I tramped out to Sutter’s Pond, and I went bullfrog hunting. It was a perfect day for it, kind of overcast and slightly muggy. The frogs were loudly courtin' and so I knew there were plenty of them to catch.

Everyone knows that to sneak up on a frog, you have to be perfectly quiet. I took off my shoes and socks, tucked my dress into my panties, and I waded in. At the edge were plenty of good, tall reeds. Dad always said that the baby frogs liked to sit on them, waiting for Father Time to make them grow. I knew he was kidding about parts of that, but sure enough, I saw a heap of baby frogs.

A rattlesnake was drinking from the muddy water. It saw me and rattled once, then slithered away. That reminded me of how Dad always told me to be real careful. Where there was one rattler, I figured there might be more.

I waded in and out of those reeds for I guess a couple of hours. I never heard my Mom calling, but she came lookin’ for me. I was diving after a big bullfrog when I heard her. I looked up and saw her face all twisted up with anger. It drove all my happy feelings down into my right big toe ‘cause she was standing there with that awful expression around her mouth and eyes that reached inside me and froze all my inner parts. She was wagging her finger at me, too. My stomach churned. I suddenly remembered how I was supposed to have helped her with supper. It was all Tommy’s fault.

I waded back onto firmer ground and hung my head. “I’m sorry, Mom. I forgot.”

“Look at you. You’re big girl now. Put that dress down. Don’t you ever go walking around like that with your underwear showing. You hear me?”

I heard her fine. I bet she never said that to Tommy. I didn’t mean to, but I guess I mumbled that out loud.

Mom yelled, “What did you say, young lady?”

I was really in for it, then. My eyes examined the mud around my feet, wishing I could drop down into it and disappear forever. I was concentrating on that so hard, I almost didn’t hear the dreaded word: “grounded.”

“Mo-om!” I groaned. “That’s not fair. It really is Tommy’s fault.”

Mom sighed. “What did he say now?” she asked, making it sound like she really didn’t care to hear.

“He said that girls couldn’t even catch frogs, and that they we were too dumb to know the difference between a lazy bullfrog and a good jumper. That’s not true, Mom. Is it?”

Mom lifted up her chin. “Oh, he did, did he?”

I almost smiled. Dad always says when Mom raises her chin and gets that look in her eye, watch out. I figured right about then that my muddy dress had suddenly been forgotten.

“You know what else, Mom?”

Her eyes were scanning the pond, looking for a good place to catch a frog, but she said, “What?” so I knew it was okay to go on.

“Tommy said that he and Daddy were going frog hunting together, man-to-man. Do you think Daddy really said that, that part about man-to-man?”

Mom looked down at me. Her eyes were even madder than before, but she drew me close, ignoring my mud-stained dress and gave me a big hug. “I don’t know if he said that, Sammie, but I think that right now would be a really good time to find that frog of yours.”

I started to cheer, but she said, “Sh! We need to be quiet so we can sneak up on the fastest frog in Calaveras County.”

Mom told me just what to do. I walked back into the glummy mud shallows and started hitting the reeds with a big stick. Frogs jumped right and left. Mom was right about there being some good jumpers. I threw my sweater over the biggest bullfrog I’d ever seen, but I missed him. I went to pick up the sweater, and there was a much smaller red-legged frog, his foot trapped in the weave of the yarn.

“Look, Mom! I caught one!”

Mom took a peek. “He isn’t very big, Sammie. I’m afraid he won’t win any competitions.”

“I don’t care. I like him. I’m going to call him “Big Red.”

Mom laughed. “Are you sure, Sammie? We can try to get another one.”

I shook my head and proudly made my way out of mucky pond. Mom held Big Red while I put my shoes and socks on. Then together we walked back to the house.

“What in the world happened to you two?” Dad wanted to know when he saw us.

I didn’t answer. I just giggled and ran upstairs to bathe.

The next day Dad and Tommy caught a huge bullfrog. He might have been the one that I saw and tried to catch. They kept him in the bathtub and I heard him croaking all night long. He sounded enormous.

Big Red didn’t need that much room. He stayed in the Terrarium Mom and I made for him with a big water bowl so he could sit in it and soak up what he needed to drink. (Did you know frogs don’t really drink? Dad says they just act like sponges, absorbing moisture through their skin.)

I spent a lot of time talking to Big Red about the contest. I wanted him to understand how he only had to hop three times and then I’d take him back to the pond. I hoped he understood, but he just stared at me, blinking those dark black eyes.

The big day finally arrived. Mom, Dad, and Tommy with his “Bo Jangles” and me with Big Red were ready to race, but we had to wait, like everybody else, until they called our name. Tommy’s name came up first. He put Bo Jangles down inside the green circle and said, “Jump, frog. Jump!” Bo Jangles just sat there. He didn’t seem to want to move. Then someone sneezed, and the big guy jumped in the opposite direction.

Bo Jangles jumped again, but, the second time, he went in a different. That was bad. There was only one more jump left. Tommy got down on his hands and knees and pleaded with the frog. Bo Jangle ribboted once, and then he jumped again. His last jump was a good one, but because he’d doubled-back, Bo Jangles only jumped a total distance from the center of three feet. It was an awful score. Tommy picked up his frog and returned to stand beside us.

“He’s a really good frog,” Tommy told his father.

Dad laughed. “He sure is , Tommy. Next year I bet he’ll jump four times that distance!”

At least thirty minutes went by (I know because I kept asking Mom what time it was.) before the judges called me. I walked out in front of all those people. My legs trembled, but I whispered to Big Red not to be afraid.

I put him down into the circle and stood back. The moment I did so, I realized for the first time how much smaller he was than all the other frogs. Maybe, Tommy was right. Maybe a girl couldn’t pick a good jumper.

“Where did you get your frog?” one of the judges asked me.

I started to answer him, but Big Red took his first flight. Then without any waiting, he leaped again and again. Two judges rushed in to catch Big Red. Two others measured.

“Nine feet,” they called out.

I took Big Red and started to walk away. “Sammie,” the judge who’d caught my frog called out.

I turned.

“I’d like to talk with you, if you don’t mind.”

He motioned for the rest of the family to join, and we all walked behind the deck of the Frogeteria, down into the part where the judges rested between sessions.

Dad and the man talked for a long time. I didn’t understand why the judge was so excited, but Daddy explained it later. My Big Red was not a usual frog. He was a California red-legged -- the kind of frog that had started the whole contest. The judge told Dad that the red-legged frogs were now rare. That’s why the judge had been so excited to see mine.

I didn’t win a trophy (and of course, neither did Tommy,) but the judge issued a special certificate for my frog since he was the “real thing.” And then the Calaveras Enterprise Newspaper wrote a story about Big Red, and everyone wanted to see our pond, but Dad and the California Department of Fish and Game built a fence around it so no one can bother our frogs.

Of course, Tommy and I released our hoppers, and we went back to doing other things, but I’ve changed my mind now about frogs. I think they’re really neat! Oh, and I haven’t heard Tommy say anything more about girls not being able to pick good jumpers.