Frogs
By Wayne Pike

I recently read, for about the hundredth time, that if you place a frog in a pan of hot water, it will jump to safety. However, if you place a frog in a pan of cool water and gradually turn up the heat underneath it, the frog will perish as it fails to perceive the danger from the slowly heating water. Talk about twisted. How do they know what a frog would do? Did some unbalanced malcontent actually conduct such an experiment? I am no Mother Teresa, but I never boiled a frog and, I am proud to report, the idea never occurred to me to do so. I can imagine that the person who came up with this sick motivational tale intended to make me more alert and adaptable to change. I just hope it doesn’t give anybody ideas.

As for me, I was motivated instead to recall my childhood friend, Phillip, and an experiment he conducted. Phillip was the sort of friend that I, now as a parent and knowing what I knew then, would not now approve of. But, back then, he was a lot of fun. I don’t think there was any solid evidence that could be brought to bear against Phillip but, in retrospect, the mere suspicion that he was up to something was generally well founded. Our shady adventures usually began when Phillip called and asked me to ride my bike up to his farm to “see something”. He rarely elaborated. My father would look at me out of the corner of his eye and grudgingly give me permission to go see what Phillip had up his sleeve.

One Sunday afternoon in mid-summer, Phillip called and I was soon peddling up the road to see him. It seems that Phillip’s parents were away and his older brothers, not yet of legal age, had conducted a rather boisterous beer party. Phillip and I sat on the lawn trampled flat by the previous night’s revelers. It was a pleasant afternoon to contemplate this more grown-up and illicit world. A small Holstein bull calf, tied to a tree next to us, shared our thoughtful mood. We wondered if Phillip’s brothers would get the trash and beer cups picked up by the time his parents got home. We wondered what would become of the beer kegs, some still partially full of beer. 

Phillip wondered aloud if he had remembered to feed the calf that morning. He wondered if the calf was thirsty. He wondered whether the calf would enjoy some warm beer. Wondering soon ceased and Phillip, boy of action that he was, ran to get a bucket. He filled it from a keg standing in the sun beside a picnic table. He offered the bucket to the calf. The calf drank the beer without stopping. Phillip got another bucket of beer. The calf downed that just as fast. Another bucket and still another went into the calf with no apparent sign that the little bovine was ever going to slow down. Phillip went for more, but I urged him to give the calf a breather. Although the calf seemed eager for more, I was concerned that his belly would pop from the expanding beer bubbles. When we finally walked away, the calf stood round-bellied, stiff-legged and bellowing for more. 

Unlike the frog referred to earlier, the calf suffered no long-term ill effects from this frivolous experimentation. If this experiment teaches a lesson at all, I would probably relate it to the occasions since Phillip’s experiment when I have seen humans left round-bellied, stiff-legged and bellowing for more beer. In that condition, no one is prepared to jump in any direction whether he is in hot water or not. Let that be a lesson to us.