The Pollywogs

by Rob Dinsmoor

By the time I got to Meadowbrook, Connecticut, I could have used a stiff drink.  I expected it to be a long drive, but I hadn’t counted on the cruel, violent maze that was Hartford.  Following Route 84 was like some Godawful intelligence test:  The signs would come up on the right side of the four-lane highway and then suddenly crop up on the left, forcing me to cross four lanes amidst the honking and swearing of irate and merciless drivers.   

            Once I was out of Hartford, I had to pull over and look at the road atlas again, where I had highlighted everything in yellow.  And then I followed the route for another hour until I got to the gate house.  The cheerful old guard  there smiled and asked what he could do for me.  “I’m here to see the Shapiros,” I said and added, for additional credibility, “Peter and Val.”

            “Go right in!” he said, lifting the gate.  You want to make your second left, and then an immediate right in the parking lot, and their house is on the far side of the parking lot.  “Thanks!” I said.

            The houses were fairly identical but, as far as I could tell from the fading daylight, they were slightly different neutral natural colors—sage, tan, sand-colored, and eggshell.  After I parked, I walked along a row of doors separated by red hardwood mulch and identical shrubs.  I found myself  touching one of the leaves of a shrub to make sure it was real.  When I rang the doorbell, it was Val who answered the door.  She gave me a hug.  “Peter is in helping Kyle with his homework.”

            Kyle was older than I remembered--now about 8 years old. He had been just a toddler when Peter and I had written for the same cable show in Manhattan.  I had since moved up to a small town in Massachusetts.  We thought my overnight stay at their new place in Meadowbrook would be a great opportunity to catch up.

Kyle had what looked like math problems sitting in front of him, and Peter was pleasantly though relentlessly goading him to try the next problem.  Peter stood and shook my hand.  “Kyle, you remember Rob, don’t you?”

            Kyle nodded but I knew he didn’t remember me at all. 

The family had made reservations at a nearby Mexican restaurants, and we all took one car.  I sat in the back seat with Kyle.  It was sort of a novelty to watch Peter operate a motor vehicle.  In Manhattan, we’d all taken subways and taxis everywhere.  Now Peter approached driving in his usual methodical way, checking carefully when he was backing out and coming to a full stop at every stop sign.  When we pulled into the packed parking lot of El Mariachi, Peter found a spot and put on turn signal before pulling into it.

El Mariachi was full and noisy.   “This is kind of a local hangout!” Peter shouted over the canned Mariachi music, and as proof, he waved to another family of three across the room.

            The father came over, a trim, muscular blonde man wearing a polo shirt.  “Hi, Jeff.  This is my friend Rob whom I used to work with back in the city.” Peter explained to him.  “He’s from Massachusetts.”  To me, he said, “Jeff is the head of our condo association and coaches the baseball team.”

            “Glad to meet you!” Jeff said, with a strong handshake.  I sized him up the way I often did people.  WASP.  Maybe corporate law or finance.  Possibly from the South, maybe Atlanta, because he had just a trace of a Southern accent.

“Did anyone see the ducks this morning?  Tucker and I were up at 6 a.m. and we actually saw them!” Jeff said, as if expecting applause.  In the town where I now lived, ducks were a common occurrence and nothing to write home about.   “We’re planning to get out and catch  us some pollywogs tomorrow morning!”  The Southern rural syntax, “catch us some,” seemed affected—a forced folksiness on Jeff’s part. 

            “Excuse me?” Peter asked.

            “What are pollywogs?” Kyle asked.

            “They’re tadpoles--frog larvae!” Val chimed in.  Val was originally from a small town in Georgia, so she probably spoke from experience.  “They swim around in ponds and swamps and kids collect them. They watch them sprout arms and legs and become frogs.”     

            “That sounds like a fun!” Peter said.  “How do you catch them?”

            “Little nets like you use to scoop up goldfish,,” Val informed him.  “You can find them just about anywhere.”

            Finding them turned out to be a little more involved than she had expected.  After dinner, we stopped at a convenience store.  Peter ran in and came out a few minutes later, saying, “He said to try the CVS on Hollis.”

            And so we did, and a half hour later, we were driving back to Meadowbrook with a net and a quart-sized plastic canister. 

Roll call for collecting pollywogs was 6 a.m. sharp.  Peter gave me the option of sleeping in but it was a nice morning and I hadn’t hunted for tadpoles in probably 40 years.  Peter had a backpack, even though it was a very short hike down to the pond.  Sure enough, there were a couple of ducks near the middle of the pond.  The pond appeared to be manmade, what with no rivers or brooks feeding it and some sort of noisy machine across the way that seemed to be circulating and aerating the water.  I suspect that, without it, the pond would get covered in algae.  Peter put down his backpack and got out the net and canister. 

            We all stared into the water. Sure enough, tiny black sperm-shaped things were moving around under the surface.  “Kyle, you’ll want to take your shoes off and roll up the leg of your jeans,” Peter instructed, and Kyle obliged.  Peter filled up the canister and then handed Kyle the net.  The tadpoles seemed to be more elusive than any of us counted on, moving in unison away from the net every time Kyle dipped it in the water.  As per Peter’s instructions, he cornered a bunch against a rock and managed to catch a couple in the net.

            “Bravo!” called out Jeff, who was standing behind us with his son Tucker, whom I estimated to be about five years old.  I couldn’t tell how long they’d been standing there.  They set up shop about ten feet away, placing their own gear down at the edge of the pond. 

            Jeff filled up their canister and handed Tucker the net.  Tucker, somewhat shy and anxious, didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with it.  “Put her in the water, Bud, and see if you can catch us some pollywogs!”  Tucker craned his neck a bit to look into the water.  “Come on and put your net in the water—that’s where the pollywogs are!”

            As Tucker hesitantly approached the water’s edge, Jeff asked, “Aren’t you forgetting something, big guy?”  When Tucker looked even more confused, he said, “Take off your shoes and socks and roll up your jeans like Kyle here!”  Tucker did as instructed and gingerly put the net in the water and waved it around.  “Don’t just wave it—scoop up some pollywogs there, Buddy!”  Jeff said.  Tucker now waded into the water with the tiny net, but didn’t seem to be having much luck.  Then he cried out and lifted his foot, which was draped with something green. 

            It wasn’t just moss or a lily pad.  It was slimey.  I’m no biologist but I thought it might be some kind of egg sac for the tadpoles.  Tucker screamed and began shaking his foot around violently.  I didn’t completely blame him—it looked kind of gross.

            I had to intervene.  “It’s okay, Tucker!  It’s harmless!” I said and then translated it into what little I knew of kidspeak.   “It won’t hurt you!”

            “Tucker!” Jeff said sharply. “Like the man said, it won’t hurt you.  Just slosh your foot around in the water.”

            Tucker managed to get the frog slime off his foot but he was decidedly done with this project.  He threw down the net and walked a few paces away from the pond, tears starting to run down his cheeks.   “Where you going, Buddy?” Jeff asked.  “We’ve got us some pollywogs to catch.”

            Tucker shook his head in an exaggerated way and put his hands to the side of his face.  “Well, I’ll go ahead and get us some,” Jeff announced.  “We don’t want to come home to Mommy empty-handed!” 

            While Jeff was stalking the wild tadpole, Tucker was kicking up dirt and rocks. He picked up a handful of rocks and threw them toward the ducks, not so much as to bean one of them as to express his frustration.   They fell well short of their target.
            “Tucker!” Jeff shouted.  “Don’t throw rocks at the ducks!  Just for that, we’re going home!”  Turning to us, he said, “Sorry.”  None of us reacted.

            After they had left, Kyle muttered, “Tucker’s dad is kind of a jerk.”

            Peter sighed and said, “I’d have to agree, Kyle.” 

            “Me, too,” I said. 

            After we got our quota of pollywogs, we packed up and headed back toward the condo.  “So, is this place a lot like where you live?” Peter asked, and it seemed like an important question to  him.  I thought about the little town I lived in, with its many wetlands and state parks brimming with nuthatches and herons, where many of its people had lived for generations, and where everyone from lawyers to grocery cashiers inhabited the same five-mile radius.  But there really weren’t a whole lot of places like that within an easy commute from New York and this was the closest thing Peter would probably ever experience.

            “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound convincing.  “It’s just like it.”

Robert Dinsmoor is has published hundreds of articles on health and medicine as well as pieces for Games, Paper, National Lampoon, and Nickelodeon Magazine and scripts for Nickelodeon and MTV.  He has written fictive memoirs titled Tales of the Troupe, The Yoga Divas and Other Stories, and You Can Leave Anytime and co-authored a children’s picture book called Does Dixie Like Me?  His short story “Kundalini Yoga at the YMCA” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.