Frogs are Bioindicators
When I was a young boy - about 9 or 10 - my brother and I would walk along the creek near our home and cut down saplings. We would strip any branches and leaves off of them, sharpen one end with a dull knife and stick it firmly into the mud on the bank. On the other end of the newly created fishing pole we would tie a length of whatever pound test fishing line we could find and a hook. We were fishing for catfish and since we did not have money to buy hot dogs, frogs were what we had access to for bait. Before deforesting the creek bank, we went frog hunting. We preferred frogs, but toads were not discarded since there was no way on earth my mother was ever going to donate any of the frozen packs of Oscar Meyers in the freezer to our worthy cause. Once we had a coffee can full of frogs, we would use a scrap piece of lumber as a cutting board and get to work makin’ bait.
We used the same knife we cut the trees down with to filet the frogs, so it was more sawing than it was cutting. The frog parts were impaled on the hooks and tossed out into the water. We saved the frog eyes - they were good for catching bream with the cane poles that lay dumbfoundingly tangled in a corner of the garage. This is what boys do - they figure things out. We also figured out that if you do not space the poles far enough apart from each other along the creek bank, that when you went to check your lines the next day the frog-filet eatin’ catfish would tangle your lines so spectacularly that you would have to go find more line and restring your poles. We also discovered that some of those catfish must have been monsters because they would pull the poles right out of the mud and drag them down the creek. Thankfully, there was no shortage of saplings.
Today, I see frogs in the marsh along the North Landing River as bioindicators, not bait. The river is healthy and evidenced by the thousands upon thousands of frogs that inhabit the wetlands that surround the North Landing . Every once in a while though, I think about cutting down a sapling…
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