Crawdads, Frogs and Alligators

Story and photos: Trina

A gal - or a dog - might have to get up early to catch the worm, but fortunately for my little dogs, you don't have to get up very early to catch the crawdad or the frog. (No crawdads or frogs were harmed on this adventure, only pursued fruitlessly.)




The boys and I went on a late afternoon creek tromp up our usual secret creek where we usual-ly don't do much more than lolly gag, read books, play scrabble and maybe, if we're feeling ambitious, wander slowly and distractedly a very short way up the creek, stopping for every interesting sight and taking hundreds of photos.

With Greg out of town, there was no one to protest when I announced this afternoon's rule: "Ok, boys, we will NOT be stopping every three minutes for a photograph!" Consequently, we hoofed it upstream at a brisk pace, not letting ourselves be distracted by anything beautiful, and made it ten times further up the creek than ever before, where we discovered, yes, crawdads and frogs... and some really big (too big to fit in a single photo frame), really deep (deep enough for alligators), really wonderful (emerald green) swimming holes that will definitely warrant return hikes with Greg. If we can get that far with him and his camera along.