Taste Like Chicken

In the wee hours of the morning When the owls and imps were upon the marsh We would take our old pirogue and paddle into the darkness Our intent was to catch bullfrogs but anything was game We were two young boys armed with BB guns and fishing poles Headlights strapped hard and tight around our skulls We searched the shore and stumps for eyes glowing in the night Cypress trees towered overhead and occasionally the canopy would break And we would see the clouds drifting quickly past and catch a glimpse of the moon The paddles would never break the waters surface, as silence was our friend Once we spotted our prey we would move in slowly and my brother would creep Slowly to the bow. He would bend over the bow reaching out many feet in front of the boat and grab the frog behind the front legs and quickly stash it away into a burlap sack Every catch brought us great pleasure, as this was no easy feat. We could have shot them with the BB guns but that was illegal and not nearly as fun. On occasion we would have to steal them from a water moccasin that was ready to strike. Those moments were like lighting and only steeled our intentions to catch more. Once we had caught a dozen or so we would begin to look for other prey to catch or harass (we were teenagers and couldn’t help ourselves). The occasional raccoon caught out in the open was always fun to chase but never pleasurable to have in the pirogue with us. We learned that lesson the hard way one night when I pushed the boat into the fork of a cypress tree with an old mother coon eating a turtle. My brother and I fought like hardened sailors to keep her at bay but both ended up in the water and nearly sank the pirogue. Other occasions found us pulling loggerhead turtles from the depths and trying to dispatch them before they bit off a finger. We both have all our appendages to this day, but I swear Lord we tried, we really tried to lose them. I never saw a frog leg jump from the pan, but the old man did make us slice them at the knees just to be sure we didn’t loose a piece of that meat that tasted better than any chicken I ever ate.