The Year of the Frog #378

Growing up, we had a beautiful fountain in our backyard. My father built it as a romantic gesture one summer when my mother mentioned how much she missed the public village fountains in her home town. The fountain soon became a barometer of my parents' relationship. When the relationship was good, the fountain was clean, the landscaping impeccable and the sound soothing. When it wasn't so rosy, the water was stagnant, the flowers were brown, and the mosquitoes were hungry.
When the fountain would stop running, it stayed like that for weeks, maybe even months. Until one parent or the other would go out there, and slowly start tending to the fountain. Eventually, the remaining partner would make it outside and help, and soon the fountain was good as new. Well, until the next rough patch.
One summer, I was about 13 years old. The fountain was completely grown over. The water was a mucky green, and very slimy. The fountain had not been in working order for many, many months. All of us kids usually stayed out of the way when it came to the fountain, except for that year. Somehow, we had tadpoles in the fountain. We would watch the tadpoles for hours, trying to catch them and force them into tadpole races. It was all fun and games.
Until, they became frogs.
Croaking frogs.
Loud croaking frogs.
LOUD croaking frogs.
The kind of loud croaking frogs that would keep me up at night.
All night.
I would stuff a pillow over my head to drown out the croaking of 900 baby frogs. In the morning, we would complain to our parents about the noise, but since they both grew up on farms at some point, our complaints fell on deaf ears.
Then our neighbors started to complain. My parents just easily ignored them, but being a teen, I was mortified.
MORTIFIED.
So was my sister. We were at the age were we could not be different!
We knew that we had to do something about it.
We snuck into my mother's laundry room, and "borrowed" a gallon of bleach.
The frogs stopped croaking that day.
In fact, they also stopped swimming. Well, they mostly just floated on their backs, but let's not be gruesome here. We did feel bad about it, mostly because we had done it without actually thinking the whole thing through. It was a shock to find 900 frog carcasses floating in my parents' fountain of love.

Everything was quiet for a while. Until weeks later, we heard the sound of 900 baby frogs in the fountain again. Again, we knew that we had to do something about it. One day, we got a 5 gallon bucket out of my dad's garage. (which wasn't easy, BTW. He locked his garage everyday to keep us kids out of his stuff.) We also "borrowed" some kid's wagon. Using a spaghetti stainer, (BTW, don't eat spaghetti at my mom's house. Ever.) we manage to get most of the baby frogs into the bucket. We then walked three miles to the nearest park that had a creek. Saying a quick prayer for the survivors of The Great Frog Massacre of '84, we released them into the wild. We walked three miles back home before our parents could discover what we had done.
I honestly forgot about the frogs, until the local paper started delivering some interesting news.
"Neighbors Complain about Frogs Croaking"
"Frogs Take Over Neighborhood Park"
"Biologist from the University to Study Increase of Local Frog Population"
"Local Wildlife Population Decreases as Frog Population Increases"
"Local Biologist Puzzled by Frog Explosion"
"National Wildlife Organization to Increase Predator Population in Hopes of Balancing Local Park"

Yeah.
Really.
For weeks, we would watch the local news for updates on the local frog problem. The dogcatcher is actually relieved of his dog catching duties and commanded to catch frogs instead!

Really.

Nether my sister or I say anything to anyone for the next 25 years. In fact, in my hometown, 1984 is still talked about as "The Year of the Frog Invasion."

FROG INVASION.

25 years later, they are still talking about it in the local barber shops.