The Celebrated Lethal Frog Of Calaveras County
…….Well, Shirley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and she used to fetch him down town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller a stranger in the camp, he was come across him with his box, and says:
"What might it be that you've got in the box?"
And Shirley says, sorter indifferent like, "It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, may be, but it an't it's only just a frog."
And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, "H'm so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?"
"Well," Shirley says, easy and careless, "He's good enough for one thing, I should judge he can outkill any frog in Calaveras county."
The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, "Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."
"May be you don't," Shirley says. "May be you understand frogs, and may be you don't understand 'em; may be you've had experience, and may be you an't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll risk forty dollars that he can outkill any frog in Calaveras county."
And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, "Well, I'm only a stranger here, and I an't got no frog; but if I had a frog, I'd bet you."
And then Shirley says, "That's all right that's all right if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog." And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Shirley's, and set down to wait.
So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and tried to pour some lead shot down its throat, kinda the way that Twain feller told the story about some silly jumpin' frog a while back. Only the frog warn't particularly happy with the thought of being a paperweight and reared up and ripped the strangers throat out.
As he lay dyin' Shirley prodded him with the tip of her boot, took his forty dollars and said, "Told ya."
(With apologies both to Mark Twain and Hurricane Shirley who sent the link about San Francisco's killer frogs via comments.)
By Quilly Mammoth, Monday, 12 March , 2007 @ 9:26 pm
The story of this should be more aptly titled “When do gooders are no gooders”. Efforts to stop the clawed frog were stopped by tales of similar programs to eliminate the Northern Pike from Lake Davis.
When CDFD officials decided to kill off the wildlife in Lake Davis to prevent spread of the Northern Pike, Watermelons enraged the neighboring town of Portola that the poison would get into their drinking water. As a result of DFW used about half the required amount. The Pike came back, are still a problem, environuts still bark and the Trout and Salmon are still threatened. California’s DFD is still ascared of the environuts. Which accounts for their hesitancy about this outbreak of a non-native species.
By Momma Sahn, Wednesday, 14 March , 2007 @ 10:13 am
Bein’ Shirley’s muh dotter, I think you got her pegged. Momma