HomeMy WebLinkAboutFlorida August 25, 2005 - A children's summer storyServing Long Island's North Fork since 1857 A
children's
summer story Focus on
Nature By Paul Stoutenburgh Everyone calls me Dumpy.
I don't like that very
much. It must
have
started a long
time
ago when I was very young. Someone
said a lithe boy dumped
me
in the pond down in the pasture. I
was too young to remember much like being born and
stuff like
that, but I do remember being in a
sort of glass box on a shelf on
someone's back porch. I guess I was there because
this family was always collecting things. From inside
my
glass box 1 could see everything that was
going on. It seemed every day some member of the family brought home something like
a salamander.
turtle, snake, bird feathers, flowers — you know, those
kinds of things that make life interesting. One
of our most common
frogs is the little green frog pictured here.
Its food is caught by the frog's
ability to shoot out its long, sticky tongue and pick
up its meal. Times /Review photo by Paul
Stoutenburgh 1 guess that's
how I must have been "collected" and put into this sort of glass house. I guess you might call it an
aquarium. Members of the family and friends would often stop by to see how I was slowly
developing from a tiny tadpole to a frog. Once I changed to a frog, the family felt it
was time to be on my own and that's why
the little
boy
took me
down to
the
pond and
dumped
me in.
From then
on, all
the frogs in
the pond called me Dumpy. The pond was a
good place to live but after a while
it got pretty crowded and, besides, there were a lot of big frogs and they
would catch
all the good insects, while I was lucky if I caught a single mosquito.
So I thought
it was
time for me to move out. I'd never been on my own before and I was a little
scared. All kinds of scary things happened to me, like when a big, black bird they called a crow
tried to catch me. But I was able to jump to another branch just in
time to escape his mean - looking, big, black bill. It often rained, so my skin kept nice and
moist
and smooth. I stayed on the low branches of a big, white oak tree, where I could catch flies, beetles, mosquitoes
and bugs of all sorts. And the best part was that there were no big bullies like back at
the pond where they always got the best things
to eat before I ever got a chance. I never did like those big bullfrogs. Life in the woods was
pretty nice. All I had to watch out for was that noisy crow and something I'd never heard
of before, and that was a snake. There was
one of these long, green- and - yellow - striped guys that seemed to always be looking for a meal — and I surely
didn't want to be his meal. Everything was going along fine until one day I noticed
my skin, which had always been moist and shiny, was starting to look dried out and not as
nice looking as it used to be. "What's going on?
Could it
be
the lack
of rain ?"
If
that was
why
my skin
looked
The Suffolk Times I A children's summer story Page 2 of 2
The North Shore Sun so bad I was in trouble. I knew it hadn"t rained fora longtime. I guessed the best
thing for me to do until it rained was to work myself under some leaves where it would
still be moist and my skin wouldn't dry out.
So I hopped around until I found a good, moist spot. This was more like it. Now my
skin felt smooth and moist again, but there was one big drawback to my new location:
I couldn't find or see anything to eat. Oh, well, maybe it would rain soon and I'd get
bads to my regular spot where there were plenty of bugs to eat.
But it didn't rain and even the moist leaves were starting to dry and shrivel up. "It's got
to rain soon or I'm in deep trouble. I'll wait one more day and if it doesn't rain then, I'll
have to move out and look for a place where there's enough moisture to keep my skin
from drying out." Dumpy was feeling mighty low and he thought maybe it was a
mistake to have left the big pond in the pasture, even if those big bull frogs made life
miserable for him.
The rain didn't come. Everyone called it a drought. People's lawns were turning
brown. Plants shriveled and died; some trees were even starting to show signs of
lack of water. Dumpy had to move, but where to? He only knew this one spot where
he had lived ever since he left the pond. No matter — he had to find water or he was
going to dry up and die.
He couldn't go in the daytime for that's when it's the hottest and driest. He'd wait till
the cooler parts of the day — early morning or late afternoon. The toughest part of his
little life was now before him. When he first hopped out from under his now dried up
home, he couldn't believe how crunchy and dry everything was. Every hop was the
same: Dry, crunchy leaves and grass were all he could see, but he had to go on.
Once he felt a cold -water spray that he thought was rain but, no, it was a lady trying
to water her garden. It was a hopeless job and she could only sprinkle here and
there, so the little water that did reach Dumpy didn't do much good to his parched
skin. But Dumpy was a fighter and he wasn't going to give up.
It was awfully hot, even in the late afternoon. He had stopped to rest under a big
mushroom when his little nose caught a whiff of something good. Could it be another
pond? Even if it had big old bullfrogs in it, Dumpy by now would take anything. Then
that lovely smell of water disappeared. What had happened? Dumpy stood on his
trembling hind feet and sniffed and sniffed like he had never sniffed before. There it
was again. It came from over by that little house on the edge of the woods.
Well, it didn't take Dumpy long to hop over to where that wonderful smell was coming
from. What he saw alongside of the house was a little homemade pond with colorful
flowers all around it. "Here's just the kind of spot I've always dreamed of." And so
Dumpy, without hesitating one bit, leaped into the little pond. How wonderful it feftl
There were some goldfish in the pond, but that didn't matter.
He was as happy as any frog could be. He would make friends with the goldfish and
he could catch all those pesky insects so that lady would be glad to have him around.
And to this day, if you look at that little pond with all the plants around it and you're
real quiet, you'll probably see Dumpy sitting on the edge of the pond quite content in
his new home.
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