"Frogs… Why did it have to be Frogs?"

The Son of Adventure Part  1 By T.R. Willey

My Aunt Barbara taught 5^th grade for decades, and every year it was a tradition for her students to give her any and every kind of knick knack to do with frogs. Although she hates frogs, she always good natured about it as it was kind of a running joke from year to year. I spent one summer in Texas with her and my uncle, and she explained where her aversion to the usually harmless amphibian came from.

My Grandparents were one of the first missionaries to go overseas on behalf of the Free Will Baptist denomination. Today this Baptist denomination has a large and active missions board, but in the 1930’s they were still new to the concept of foreign work. My grandfather had already done work in Peru before he had married, and was now returning to the field after several years off to start a new work in Panama with the Choco Indians. Accompanying him this time were his wife Mabel and their two children – Tommy, age 5, and Barbara, age 3.

Needless to say it was an adjustment learning to live in the jungles of Panama, especially for my grandmother, Mabel. Raised in Atlanta by parents who had moved down from the North, she was a tough, take charge Yankee girl hiding cleverly behind the genteel facade of a Southern belle. Still, nothing had prepared her for living in the jungle with it’s collection of exotic and dangerous wildlife.

A big help in this area was David, a young Indian boy who had come to live with my grandparents. His father was a local Indian chief who wished for his son to learn Spanish and mathematics from our family, as their tribe had been swindled in the past by traders who preyed on the tribe’s lack of education.

While David benefited from his education, my family reaped the benefits of having his sharp eyes in the home. One afternoon not long after David had arrived, my grandmother was sitting at a table in the back of the house reading when she heard David call for my grandfather. Apparently a deadly coral snake had crawled in through the front door near to where the children had been playing earlier. While Tom Sr. and David worked together to dispose of the snake, Mabel decided it was a good idea to start learning from David how to spot snakes. She also made sure that she learned how to shoot that .22 rifle Tom Sr. had left in the house for her protection.

One afternoon my grandmother heard my aunt yelling "Sapo! Sapo!" – the Spanish word for frog. The kids had been playing in the river near the house, so she went down to see what the commotion was about. What she saw made her blood run cold. In the water was a boa constrictor with a head bigger than her hand. Apparently Barbara had only seen the head sticking up out of the water and thought it was a frog. Mabel quickly ran back to the house to get the rifle but when she got back the snake was gone.

A couple of days later she got her chance. Again, she heard Barbara yelling "Sapo!", but this time from the back garden. As Barb came running in the house, Mabel looked out the window and did not need David’s sharp eyes to see the large boa that was slithering its way through the yard toward the house. Whether it was the same snake from earlier she didn’t know, but its body was easily 8 inches in diameter. Mabel grabbed the rifle and steadied it on the kitchen windowsill. Her first shot missed, merely kicking up the dirt near the snake. The large boa constrictor barely flinched. She adjusted her aim, fired a second shot, and the deed was done.

My aunt Barbara told me the story almost 24 years ago as she stood by her shelf filled with all the different frog figurines she had received as gifts over the years. It wasn’t until just recently that I found the photographic evidence of that afternoon’s activities back in 1938. Going through pictures my Dad had transferred to his computer from old photos and slides, I found the shot him at 6 yrs old, a 4 yr old Barb, and my grandfather holding up a snake with a head the size of a large bullfrog. Although the right hand edge of the photo is distorted by age there is enough of the snake visible to realize it was at least as big around as my grandfather’s thigh, a man who at the time stood 6 foot 1" and weighed over 230 lbs, all bone and muscle. Asking my Dad about the picture, he confirmed "Oh yeah, that’s Barbara’s snake. By the way, did she ever tell you about why she hates frogs so much?"

"Yeah Dad, I think she may have mentioned something about it…"

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