The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a wild yarn involving a case of mistaken identity, a gambler who’d bet on anything, and a very unusual frog named Daniel Webster.

bob beilz

microraptor

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Not a Winner  ***Spoiler Alert ***  Jumping frog contests are supp0osed to be great fun, and this tory is based on the real juming frog contest in Angle’s Camp, CA that goes on to this very day. This story is supposed to be funny, and If you put 5lbs. of B-Bs or buckshot down a frog’s throat to make him too heavy to jump, well, that is supposed to be even funnier than the story that leads up to it. How many kids have tried this after reading his book?   When I was a kid I read this book, and I just now read it again. I liked it then; I don’t like it now. Then when we were kids my tepdad or soon to be stepdad, took my sister and I to Angel’s Camp to see the frog jumping contest in Calaveras County. I swear that we must have seen a toad derby too, because my stepdad called it the “Toad Turd Derby,” and I thought that he was so funny, funnier than how I view Mark Twain.   He even took us to see a Coonhound Trial, where they run a skin of a racoon over the ground ending up at a chosen tree where a real raccoon is in a cage high up in the tree. Now that I am older, I hate these sadistic contests and wish they were banned. I went to one here in Tahlequah, OK, and after the coonhounds found the racoon, they lowered the cage to the ground and let the dogs bark at the frightened raccoon. I am just not into using animals in contests that frighten or injure them.   Since I have little to say about this book, I will add a little story that I put in my journal back in the early 1990s. My husband titled it, and perhaps it had something to do with the book “Cannery Row.” Not sure.  The Great American Frog Hunt  My husband Clark received a phone call from his co-worker Rick, who asked him if he wanted some frogs since his neighbor was draining his pond, and he was afraid that the frogs would all die if Clark didn’t come to get them. We showed up at Rick’s with a bucket in hand. The guys were already having a party, and Tim, Clark’s friend, was there and asked, “Are you going to eat those poor frogs’legs?” Clark said, “No. We want them for our garden.”    We went to the neighbor’s and saw that a lot of goldfish had already died. Made sense to us. Clark and I began picking up baby frogs and putting them in the bucket. He was ever so gentle so as not to injure them. We also found a toad and took him too. Then Clark added some mud and water to the bucket, saying, “My froggies have to be happy.” We must have gathered about 30 frogs.   When we got home, we let them loose near a large washtub of water, and I put empty cat food cans around with water in them. Clark called them “Stagecoach Stations.” The End

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