Reminiscing

I don't know why, but I was just thinking about the following memory:

In the early 1990's my brothers, me, and some neighborhood kids decided it would be fun to keep frogs as pets. We went out and caught the frogs from the creek bed and our back yards, which isn't hard to do in Iowa. We placed the frogs in 5-gallon buckets that my dad always had around. Each one of us had one bucket, and were allowed to put "our" frogs into them, which were then housed in our old play house (my family's old pickup camper).

We put rocks, flowers, dirt and water into the buckets--trying to make a home away from home for the frogs (I don't know what we were thinking). Everyday we would go and "feed" the frogs with grass, etc., and clean the buckets. The frogs would get their exercise when we put them all into one bucket while we cleaned, or when we would play with them in the grass, dirt or sand. That summer was when we discovered that you do not get warts from frogs.

Each frog was different in looks and temperment, so we never got them mixed up. Mine was called Fair, as I always focused my summer on getting ready for the Crawford County Fair 4-H division.

Eventually, we had to let the frogs go, and my youngest brother bawled as they finally leapt away. After a couple hours we had to go and find another frog to make him feel better. I think he forgot about it a couple hours later, though.

I don't know why we housed frogs. My family had a cat, dog, and fish, and the other kids had rabbits. Our parents didn't care either, because it got us out of the house and out of their hair. But, it's not as if they could say much though, because my mom and her siblings used to tie firecrackers to frogs and blow them up (we're not allowed to do that, but we've tried). The parents also let us raise worms one year. Tiff (neighborhood friend) and I actually dissected some worms, because we wanted to get a head start on biology for the next school year--once again, I don't know why.

So, stupid story, but felt like sharing.