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Florida August 25, 2005 - A children's summer story Serving 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. © 2005 Times - Review Newspapers Terms of Service - Privacy Policy http: / /www2.timesreview.com/ST /stories /318013903992521.php 8/25/2005