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August 25, 2005 - A shorebird shares its taleThe Suffolk Times • August 25, 2005 A children's summer stor Suffolk Times photo by Paul Stoutenburgh 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. It eats just about anything that moves. Everyone calls me DUMPY. .1 "1 1 - hat very. much. It must have started a ong time ago when I was very o e Someone said a little boy a e I was in the pond down in he p stur too young to remember much like being born and stuff like that, but I do remem- ber being in a sort of glass box on a shelf on someone's back porch. I guess I was FOCUS collecting things. From inside my O N glass box I could NATURE see everything that was gohg by Paul on. It seemed Stoutenburgh_ members of o he -_ -- - - family brought home something like a salamander, tur- _, . --, --- avuui� aa, uvwclJ — yvU know, those kinds of things that make life interesting. I guess that's how I must have been "collected" and put into this sort of glass house. I guess you might call it an aquar- ium. 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 ca e 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, mos- quitoes and bugs of all sorts And the best part was that there were no big bul- lies like back at the pond where they al- ways 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 cro and something I'd never heard of before and that was a snake. There was one o these long, green -arid- .yellow -stripe guys that seemed to always be lookin for a meal — and I surely didn't want t be his meal. . VVJLy'mng was going along fine unt one day I noticed my skin, which had a] ways been moist and shiny, was startin, to look dried out and not as nice looking as it used to be. "What's going on? Couk it be the lack of rain ?" If that was why MY skin looked so bad I was in trouble I knew it hadn't rained for a long time. 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 back to my regular spot where there were plenty of bugs to o�F He was as happy as any frog could be. 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 o 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 o 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 after- noon. 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 af- ternoon. 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 nev- er 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 along- side 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 felt! 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 in- sects 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.