Country Humor

No sense in frog sense
By Jack S. Bray

I am not by nature much of a student of nature. The birds and bees can go about their business with little interference from my scientific curiosity.

But now and then, something happens to perk up my interest. Like the other day, when I was burning a big brush pile—mostly limbs ripped off our trees by that 100-year ice storm back in February. It was a rare windless day. The limbs had dried out and should have burned well, I thought.

They did. In a few minutes, the pile had burned down to a glowing bed of coals. About then, I noticed a little frog hopping through the grass toward the smoldering brush pile. It was what some people call a leopard frog (Rana pipiens—I looked that up), a spotted amphibian that in low light is easy to mistake for a copperhead.

The frog hopped along directly at the bed of coals.

“Surely that frog has more sense than to jump into a burning brush pile,” I thought. The pile of coals was still putting out a lot of heat; I could feel it on my face from where I stood 15 or 20 feet away. At ground level, where the frog was, the temperature change must have been pretty dramatic.

But the frog didn’t have as much sense as I gave him credit for. A long leap took him directly into the hot coals. He had a lot of momentum going, and another strong hop carried him out to the other side of the fiery coals. I went around to that side of the brush pile to have a look.

His recent experience hadn’t done the frog a lot of good. He sat kind of scrunched up with his legs folded under his body and his eyes closed. I studied the par-broiled frog closely for some clue as to why he had jumped into the hot coals. I couldn’t tell the frog’s age (nor its sex, although I have been calling it a “he”). Maybe this was a teenage frog whose friends had dared him to try to leap the glowing coals. Or, maybe he had lost an election bet. Perhaps another frog had told him: “Go jump in the fire.” Humans sometimes tell one another to “Go jump in the lake.” It could be the frog was clinically depressed.

Whatever his motive, I’m pretty sure the frog soon realized that he had made a serious mistake. I watched him a good while longer, and then went to the house to tell my wife about the frog and his weird dive into the hot bed of coals.

I even invited my wife to go take a look, but she declined in favor of finishing up the dusting. Apparently, my wife has even less interest in natural phenomena than I have.
I went back to check on the worsening frog from time to time. He never moved from where he landed when he leaped out of the hot coals. About an hour and a half after his trip through the burning brush pile, the frog packed it in, leaving me still wondering why he (or she) had done such a lunatic thing.

This episode of the fried frog didn’t teach me a lot about herpetology in particular or natural science in general. But I’ll bet I’m one of only a few people to observe a frog take a flying leap into a burning brush pile.

A few rules for leaders
By Mitch Jayne

Back before old Zeke Dooley of Blairs Creek passed in 2006, I made a “must do” trip over there twice a year, to keep up with the “Zeke” way of thinking and saying things.

Since Zeke was born in the early 1900s, just about everything in the way of modern “progress” had happened in his lifetime—electricity, radio, cars, tractors and airplanes. He even lived to see science put up weather satellites, adopt computers for brainwork and use TV for passing on news and entertainment. These things were always a wonderment to Zeke but had little to add to his practical lifestyle, which was “Don’t allus be fixin’ to disappoint yerself.”

In those days, I liked to get his take on changing times and values, and I decided the other day to go over and see if the Dooley grandchildren had kept any of his ways.

I got there in time to meet Zeke and Perletta’s great-grandson, Todd, just home from high school and full of enthusiasm about next year’s presidential election.

Remembering how Zeke had thought presidents should be turned out yearly, like a finished crop of hogs, I listened to every word.

“We all voted on what we thought should be candidate qualifications,” said Todd briskly. He showed me the list he had copied off the blackboard.

1. Must be able to cope with other people’s messes.

2. Must avoid violence in solutions.

3. Must multi-task well.

4. Must be able to delegate a job other people do better.

5. Must not display or compare muscles or make dumb threats.

6. Must look for solutions, not standoffs.

7. Must walk softly, talk sensibly and carry a stun gun.

8. Must care more about people than protocol and empathize with their strange ways.

“Wow!” I said, “Just eight qualifications?”

“Well, there were 10,” said Todd, “but we voted down the ones about age and experience, since they’ve never seemed to make much difference.”

“Todd,” I said, “I knew your great-grandpa’s opinions pretty well. Do you think he would have approved of this list your class made?”

Todd’s mischievous grin took me back 50 years to when Zeke owned it. “Well, I’ve heard how mule-headed he was from Dad and Grandpa,” said Todd, “how he liked to think he made his own harness and moonshine and molasses, had his own rules and ‘killed his own snakes,’” he said slyly. “But he knew my great-grandma had a little to do with it.”

I waited for the punch line from this newest of the Dooley clan, and it wasn’t long coming.

“I believe he’d think eight rules would be plenty, to describe a job a woman’s qualified to do better than a man.”

“Lordy,” I thought on the way home, “what will these new ‘sons of the pioneers’ come up with next?”

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