One event that we hold dear to our scheduled August events is The Valley City Frog Jumping Festival. This will be our 4th year attending such a well executed and surprisingly fun/silly event. It might be silly to most of us, but there are some people who take this frog jumping business seriously — which makes it even that more amusing to me!
As a young child, my family would take a week vacation up in Canada at a resort called Clevelands House in the Muskoka Lake area. I have fond memories of our vacations and the fun time as a family we did have! One thing my brother Pat and I would do to amuse ourselves was to go frog hunting and catching in the nearby pond on the resort campus. We literally spent hours amusing ourselves catching enormous sized Bull Frogs. We would bring the frogs back to the "cabin" and let them play in the bath tub. Meanwhile, the cleaning people would come in and we'd spook the devil out of them. Which amused us even more! Being I was a young child (9 years and younger when we went), my brother often convinced me that if I kissed a frog he would turn into a handsome prince. I'm proud to say, I kissed me at least a 1/2 dozen frogs that vacation and my Prince surfaced some 28ish years later! So yes, girls — if you kiss a frog or two they do turn into handsome princes, but it could take some years for them to materialize — so just be patient!
Sunday, August 12th, is the big Valley City Frog Jumping Festival. We are signed up and we decided this year that we'd catch us our own frog to compete with. Earlier this summer I scoped out a pond near by to see if they had any meaningful frogs. And it did!
There were two visible frogs in the pond as shown by the above pictures. To that I say - "SCORE". Nothing like knowing your pond is but a 2 minute car ride away!
Yesterday evening we set out to go frog hunting. We bought ourselves a net and a container to keep the frog in. We saw several frogs but they were quick to hide - much of that was due to the noise the kids were making and my "rusty" technique.
Jon and I decided that today we would go solo without kids to catch us a frog. Jon read up on how best to catch a frog via the official Valley City Frog Jumping website last night. We actually learned a lot about the best way to approach a frog. We learned that last night we were going about it incorrectly - hence the frogs hiding before I could even get close enough to it.
One thing we needed was a longer net so we "MacGyver-ed" our newly purchased net by fixing it to a "paint rod" with duct tape!
Note, I'm wearing my very fashionably "hick-girl" overalls in celebration of frog hunting!
We drive the mile drive to the pond and park and I hop out of the car ready to catch me a frog.
I spend a few minutes scoping out the pond …..
And as the pictures show, I squealed in delight as I actually caught the little bugger! I wasn't sure but when I shook the net it started to hop inside! I think we might have us a winner!
And I'm going to tell you, you haven't lived unless you have gone frog hunting/catching. It is so much fun and the inner soul laughed and laughed! I am so glad that we decided to scrap the "rent a frog at the festival" and catch our own.
We stopped in at the pet store and bought it some crickets and waiting for him/her to have a feast. Need to store up its energy so it can bring us home a trophy on Sunday! No pressure frog with two names (Merida and Super Pocoyo)!
this post was HILARIOUS!!! good luck at the contest!!
ReplyDelete