FROG LEGS DELIGHT

By Mike Collin
Recently, I and my older brother Tim went out to get some bull frog legs for dinner. We haven’t had to eat frog legs since we were kids but, Michigan is in some tough times right now. It’s like our dad is in charge of the entire economy and just like when we were kids, everyone is starving.

Don’t get me wrong. Just because poor people eat frog legs does not mean they don’t taste good. In fact, they are excellent. They really do taste like chicken. There just is not a lot of meat on each leg. It’s like eating buffalo wings. You need a mess of frog legs to get a meal.

My brother picked me up from under the bridge where I am currently living and we went to our secret frog leg pond way back in the woods. We parked near the “Exploit Chemicals” chemical dumping site at Quagmire Lake. There we found an old two track road that we walked down until we got to the old frog pond about a mile from Quagmire Lake. There were lots of bullfrogs and my brother and I each got six frogs which amounts to twelve legs for each of us. They were feisty little fighters. We caught each one with a homemade butterfly net then stuck them in a burlap sack.

We started back but took a wrong turn and got lost. Finally, we ended up on the other side of Quagmire Lake. We went up to the trail that went around the lake figuring that the trail would lead us out to the road. When we got to the lake shore we noticed that there were nothing but dead animals all around the shoreline and dead fish floating all over. There were deer and foxes and rabbits and birds all over.

My brother Tim started to panic. He insisted there must be some monster in the lake that is so horrible that it is scarring everything to death. Neither of us wanted to stand around there so we got going down the path until we could see the road and the chemical dump. We noticed that there was a line of trucks at the dump waiting to poor their stuff down a drain in the parking lot. As they poured some green and orange stuff into the drain it immediately came out the end of a pipe and fell like a waterfall into the lake. Tim said they were trying to dye the color of the lake so that they could better see the monster that was scarring all the wildlife to death. The trucks had a lot of foreign writing on them. There were trucks with writing in Italian, Chinese, Spanish, German, Dutch, Portuguese and a couple of trucks with writing neither of us could recognize. We figured they must be from Canada.

Just as we were getting up to the road a DNR (Department of Natural Resources Officer) stepped out of the bushes and asked us “what do you have in the bag?” We told him we had some frogs and opened the bag to show him. The officer then asked us if we had fishing licenses. Tim and I pulled our bill folds out and showed him our licensees. The officer then counted the frogs in our bag and said we had too many. He said we could only have five frogs each in your possession. He then said we were in violation of the law. He then wrote us out a citation for $100 each. He then said if he caught us poaching animals again we were going to be in big trouble.

I asked the officer if he was there to investigate all the dead animals around the lake and if the chemicals being poured into the lake by the trucks might be the problem. He said the chemical company called him and said there were two scruffy guys out poaching frogs in the woods. He also said the chemical company was licensed to dump chemicals from foreign countries in the lake and that the company was a good partner with the DNR. We then received our citations and the DNR officer confiscated our frogs. He then dumped all twelve of the frogs into Quagmire Lake. Within a few seconds the frogs were all floating motionless on top of the lake.

Well, this was not such a good frogging trip. Now I’ve got to pick up a thousand cans and bottles to get enough deposit money to pay my $100.00 fine. My brother still wants to go and pick up crayfish (crawdads) next week but, I think I’m going to cancel.

TAGGING THE NORTH AMERICAN BIG FOOT

By Tim Colin
Although there is not much that you can legally hunt this time of year, it is good to be preparing yourself for hunting season. This year I intend on bagging me one of those big foot monsters that scare away tourist from Northern Michigan. The problem with the typical big foot monster is that they are dark colored and very hard to see at night. Nighttime is the best time to hunt big foots because that is when most of the conservation officers are sleeping.

I have come up with a unique way of solving the coloring issue of the big foot monster. I intend on creeping up to the big foot monsters while they are feeding and paint a large fluorescent ‘X” on the sides of the creatures. In order to minimize the danger to myself, I have with me my younger brother Mike who is going to assist me by actually painting these large, powerful and, hungry beasts. While my brother paints the beast with an “X” I will be hiding in the bushes ready to dial 911 in case something bad happens to my brother. I am just glad that I had the foresight to realize that this was a job that would take two people.

The paint I was using was some I picked up at the county garage. They had a lot of it sitting around so I figured they wouldn’t mind if I borrowed a five gallon bucket. That just made one less can that they would have to deal with.

The bait I was using to lure the big foots in was a garbage sack full of Walleyes. My uncle Mike had gone fishing down south of a chemical plant in Midland. He scooped up a whole bunch of fish with his net. The fish couldn’t swim too well because of all the large tumors they had growing all over them. My uncle soon found out that he couldn’t clean the fish because the stuff oozing from the tumors was eating through the steel of his fish fillet knife.

After my brother poured out the fish on the ground we both hid in the bushes. It was only about ten minutes later when a large brown big foot showed up. It ate on the fish for a couple of minutes before my brother finally got up the guts to go out there to paint an “X” on the creature. My younger brother had a dripping paint bush in his hand as he slowly edged up to the big foot monster. “Hurry up,” I yelled at him, “We don’t have all day,”

Well my hollering must have got the bears attention since he immediately charged my brother and swiped him across his belly with his enormous claw. My brother fell to the ground like a sack of flour. He just laid there shaking and bleeding. AS for the bear, he just turned around and went back to eating the fish. I starting laughing and had an awful time stopping long enough to call 9-11. Just thinking abut my brother lying twitching like he was still brings a smile to my face. The only bad thing is that the big foot ate up all my bait and I didn’t even get him tagged with florescent paint.

My brother only ended up having the front of his shirt tore to shreds and a few scratches. After a hundred or so stitches my brother was ready to go home. It looks like this year I am just not going to have any advantage at all hunting big foots here in Northern Michigan.

HUNTING MUSHROOMS IN MICHIGAN OR, CALL A PARAMEDIC PLEASE!!!

By Tim Colin
You can't be a true outdoors person in Michigan unless you hunt for mushrooms. Mushrooms are common especially during the wet, sloppy season we call Spring. I have gone hunting for the elusive morel (yummy) mushroom since I was a kid. I have been well trained to identify morel mushrooms from the many species of mushrooms in Michigan that are poisonous even, deadly poisonous. So be warned, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PICK MUSHROOMS UNLESS YOU HAVE BEEN TRAINED TO IDENTIFY THE EDIBLE FROM THE POISONOUS TYPES!!!

With the above in mind, I decided to take my brother Mike with me into the mushroom woods to teach him how to find and identify morel mushrooms. My brother is not stupid but, he has a very short attention span and a real problem with logical and coherent thinking. He wasn't too interested in looking for mushrooms so, I told him that you can meet some really nice babes in the deep woods. I meant to say "bears" but, the mention of "babes" seemed to get him interested in hunting mushrooms so, I didn't correct my misspoken word.

After about an hour thrashing around in the bush, I found zero mushrooms. My brother on the other hand, found a whole bag full of mushrooms. Unfortunately, they were not morel mushrooms. I had no idea what the mushrooms were and I said that it would be unwise to eat the mushrooms unless they were identified by someone more experienced in mushroom identification. My brother disagreed.

After a trip to the emergency room, a stomach pumping and two blood transfusions, my brother is now in stable condition. My brother did not farewell after eating mushrooms that he knew nothing about however, he claims he saw a lot of "babes" after chowing down on the little knobby fungi. I told him I think he was probably seeing angels. He responded "you're right, they were gorgeous".

"Whatever!", I replied.
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NO COUNTY FOR OLD BEARS

By Tim Colin
Recently there have been a number of bear sightings in Northern Michigan. Of course everyone knows there are no bears in Northern Michigan because the big foots ate them all. All the best scientific minds that I personally know, all say the same thing. So why is the public so ignorant about the bear/big foot facts. I decided to look beyond the scientific community to someone with some historical knowledge as to how the bears disappeared and were replaced with big foots.

To gain an accurate history regarding how bears disappeared in Michigan I thought about finding a bear expert at some college. Of course I remembered how boring college teachers are from my one semester at CMU so, I decided to look up someone who had first hand knowledge about how the big foots replaced the bears in Northern Michigan. That person was an old retired sheriff from Kalkasky County. I found the old grizzled man living in a trailer with a bunch of old bats. When I walked through his front door he told me to close it fast because his bats were light sensitive and when spooked by sunlight they immediately pee.

“How many bats you got now Sheriff Nutsman? And, how are you doint?" I asked as I approached an old man who was sitting on a bean bag chair and starring at a lava lamp. He was smoking a medicinal substance so I concluded he must have glaucoma or cancer or maybe really bad hemorrhoids since he was sitting on a bean bag chair.

“Some of them bats is pets and some of them is just plain wild. I'm doing really well right at the moment,” the sheriff commented as he took a deep puff on his pain reliever. “Say, do I know you?” he asked.

“You don’t know me but, you know my family. You arrested my dad, his brothers and my granddad several times over the years.”

“So, your last name must be Colin?” Sheriff Nutsman said as he remembered my family.

“Yes,” I replied. “My name is Tim Colin.”

“Yeah, I knew your family. They was always getting arrested for hunting and fishing out of season. They also liked to use homemade dynamite as their favorite way to take wild game. They also liked to rustle cattle and had sticky fingers everywhere they worked. Yeah, I knew that bunch really well. I knew your daddy well too. I knew you mom especially well. I don’t know what she ever saw in your dad. He was such a looser. Say, you’re not here for some sort of paternity suit or something?”

‘No Sheriff,” I responded. “I’m only interested in how the big foots got rid of the bears and took over the forest in Northern Michigan. You’re not some eccentric millionaire living in a beat up old trailer full of bat materials?”

“No. What you see is what you’d get, son.” Answered Sheriff Nutsman.

I was a bit disappointed and said” I think I’d rather be homeless than inherit this place. I’m really only interested in the bears.”

“Good choice boy,” Sheriff Nutsman said. “Now I’ll tell you my story. It was way back in the 1970’s when I was just a journeyman deputy for sheriff Goober Peas. Now old Goober was getting ready to retire when he and I had to drive out into the cedar swamps to investigate what was a complete massacre of bears.

There were tore up bears and ripped-up bicycles everywhere I said to the sheriff, ‘What happened here?’

“It would appear that this was an illegal honey deal gone wrong,” said Sheriff Peas. “A couple of those bicycles are from Canada. You can tell because they have “God Save The Queen” on their License Plates. These other bikes say “Made in Japan” on them so some of these bears must be locals. You know we can’t seem to build anything in America anymore,” the sheriff said in a disgusted voice. He was really ticked that we don’t make much in the U.S. anymore.

I pointed out to the sheriff that there was a large tricycle with a big wheel that didn’t have a scratch on it. Evidently the owner had been chased off by someone.”

“I know who owns that bike,” the sheriff exclaimed. “It belongs to Boo Boo Bear. I don’t believe he’s mixed up with this stuff. I think he might have the Canadian honey that appears to be missing from this crime scene.”

Now I found something in a muck hole. “Come over here and look at this,” I said.

The sheriff came over and looked at the muck. “It looks like we have ourselves a big foot going after poor Boo Boo. There was this big foot named Goldie Locks that escaped from a zoo last week up in Canada. He could have just took off out of the zoo and been done with it but this big foot is a real psychopath. Before he left the zoo he stopped off at the squirrel cage and ate every single squirrel at the zoo. There must have been thirty squirrels that he ate just out of meanness. I know for a fact that Canadian zoos always make sure their big foots are well feed and cared for so he didn’t have to eat all the squirrels. He didn’t even have to eat a one of them. You just can’t make these things up.

Well, poor Boo Boo was found all ate up. In fact, bears started to disappear all over Michigan as more and more Canadian Big Foots crossed the border into our state. Now there is not a single bear left here anywhere in Michigan. All there are left are those big foot monsters. You just can’t make this stuff up.

You know last night I had this dream. It was about the old days and my dad was still alive. He and I were on roller skates like people used to be way back in the 1960’s. Dad passed me while smoking a home rolled cigarette. I knew that he was going on ahead to find a couple of chairs to sit down in so we could each enjoy one of his home rolled cigarettes.”




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