I still have my first two frogs. They probably date from my high school years in the early 1940s. One is a froggy bank (unfortunately still just filled with pennies) and the other is a pink ceramic frog with holes in its back for burning incense sticks.
My next experience with frogs was with the songs of the living creatures. My husband and I were in South Vietnam as short-term missionaries with Vietnam Christian Service. (We had been concerned about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and had decided to get closer to the action. We were right in our concern, but that is another story.)
Our first two months were spent in Saigon studying the language. In that hot, humid climate, our room window had only bars. Outside the window was a deep ditch which normally ran with only a trickle of water. The frequent heavy rain, however, would fill the ditch to overflowing — and wake up the frog population. We would hear the frog chorus in full force. The bullfrogs had deep heavy voices, the middle-sized frogs had higher and lighter sounds and the tiny frogs had high, tiny voices. I took great pleasure in their songs, and recorded them to listen to when we got back to the dry, mostly frogless prairies of South Dakota.
Sometime after that, frog gifts of all sorts — toys, statues, pictures and other curios — began to gather around me. Perhaps they were attracted by the recorded frog voices they heard. When my children noted how I would smile on receiving a frog, that became a gift that was easy to find. My grandchildren later followed suit.
Eventually, I had 40 or 50 frogs, mostly quite small. But I still did not consider myself to be a frog collector.
I became an Official Frog Collector following a trip to Japan to visit my daughter. I suffered a minor injury: The little nail on my left foot was torn out due to the carelessness of workers at a construction site next to the sidewalk. In Japan, it is not the custom to sue the business that is responsible for damage. Instead, the victim is treated royally. The construction company provided transportation and guides for sightseeing, paid more for my ruined shoe than I have paid for my whole shoe wardrobe, and finally provided the limousine to take us to the airport for our trip home.
The company also sent a huge box home with me — wish I had remembered to measure it. Arriving home in Vancouver, we opened the box and out jumped frogs — a count of over two hundred! Some large ceramic figures, many tiny statues, an umbrella with a frog head, stuffed frogs, frog pictures, tapestries and an oversized book, “Frog” by Thomas Marent. Of course, the frogs didn’t actually jump out of the box, though in my excitement about this treasure trove, it seemed as if they were actually leaping and jumping.
I am definitely a Frog Collector. I have given many frogs away and have closet boxes with frogs in them. And they still keep arriving!
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