THE GIANT NUCLEAR MUTANT FROG

FISHING FOR WINTER TADPOLES
By Mike Colin
Most people would not think of tadpoles as being a delicious delicacy. Actually, the little tikes you find swimming in ditches and murky ponds in the spring and summer do taste quite awful. I ate some on a dare once and ended up getting my stomach pumped. In fairness to the tadpoles I also ate on a dare that day some tree bark, some lily pads and some raw road kill. But, out of everything I ate that day the tadpoles tasted the worst. The main lesson I learned from that ordeal is not to let your older brothers dare you to do anything.

Now as I was saying about tadpoles, the little boogers most people think of are not good to eat however, there is a type of tadpole that lives in Northern Michigan and it is just right for the dinner table but, they are not available until after the snow is piled high. These tadpoles are gray in color and can get up to seven feet long and unlike their summer cousins, these tadpoles have rows and rows of sharp, nasty teeth that can rip through a fiberglass boat like a chainsaw. I can still see the one I lost a few years ago from the shoreline. It sank in about five feet of water.

Now these large, toothy but tasty tadpoles I have found only in one small lake in Michigan. It is not far from where I grew up as a kid. The lake is in the exact spot that a nuclear reactor once sat. I guess there was some sort of accident and the reactor disappeared into the ground and a small lake formed in its place. I believe the accident was never covered in the news because a lot of government officials wanted to keep the place a secret because it was such a great site for catching delicious monster tadpoles. My dad use to catch fish in the reactor holding pond back before I was born. I’ve been told that’s why I was born with webbing between my toes and a set of functioning gills. My gills scare off a lot of girls every time they try to give me a hickey.

Now the location of this lake remains a secret to most but, if you happen upon it you will see the name is “Keep Out” lake or maybe lake “Keep Out”. I’m not sure which since the word “Lake” was left out of the name on the signs. The name is on a sign about every 20 feet on the ten foot high chain link fence that surrounds the lake. There is also a ring of barbed wire on top of the chain link fence so it would be very difficult to enter except that about 10 years ago a large tree fell across the backside of the fence and now you can walk right in. I disabled the barb wire so it won’t cut my tires when I drive over it.

On my last tadpole fishing trip I brought along a guy I work with named Gerrard. He’s an old guy (about 27) and he lives in his mom’s basement and raises rats for a living. The rat business he inherited when his dad disappeared. There was a lot of buzz around town that Gerrard’s old man was eaten by rats. I never asked Gerrard about his old man but I always think about being attacked by rats when I go into any basement. Of course the main reason I brought Gerrard along is that it takes two people to catch those really big whopper tadpoles. It also takes a tow truck and I happened to borrow one from my uncle Frank. I let him drive my girlfriends Jaguar for a day while I got the use of his tow truck so I could go fishing for monster tadpoles.

Now these monster tadpoles weigh from 200-800 lbs. My dad says he’s seen them lurking around in the mucky waters that were 20ft long and might of weighed 2-3 tons. That’s why just a fishing reel and plastic line won’t work on these tadpoles. If their sharp teeth don’t cut right through the line then they will simply run out the spool of line on your reel. The really big tadpoles are just about impossible to stop when they start to run because of their great weight and because they usually have little nubbins started for legs and arms. The nubbins give them a grip on the lake bottom.

Well, I backed the tow truck up to Keep Out Lake and released some slack in the wench. I had a tow hook already on the end of the chain and that was all I needed to catch a giant tadpole. Giant tadpoles don’t have to be actually hooked to reel them in. Giant tadpoles just kind of suck in the bait and then clamp their toothy jaws so firmly down that it would take ten sticks of dynamite to open them up again. Giant tadpoles love their food and once it is in their belly they will not let anyone have it or in this case, have it back. The bait we were using was a skunk I hit last week with about four pounds of bacon grease soaked into the fur. Even though for humans skunk smell really stinks, to some animals it is like a dinner bell. For example, skunk fur is used to make trout flies in the spring. Now the smell of bacon or pork makes every single plant and animal in the universe start to salivate. We have giant lizards in Michigan that live exclusively on pork.

Finally, Gerrard and I were all set to catch us a whopper of a tadpole. My dad and I used to go fishing for them when I was just a kid. One giant tadpole would feed my folks my brothers and me for most of the winter so; my dad always took our annual tadpole expedition very seriously. Once we had the bait tied securely with wire onto the chain just above the hook on the wench, we waded out about ten feet into the pond and tossed the bait out about another eight feet which was as far as Gerrard and I together could throw it. Then, Gerrard and I splashed around and around in the water to help draw a giant tadpole into our bait. I remembered when I was a kid my dad would have me swim out about 30-50 feet from shore and then splash around to draw the in the really big tadpoles. Then they would swarm in like piranhas. Of course just being a kid I could run like crazy to get away from the monsters. Now that I’m in my early twenties I think I might be slowing down too much to swim that far out into the lake and lure in the monsters.

So we were all set to catch a monster tadpole that day but, we did not imagine the size of the monster that we lured into the bait. About half way across the lake a giant creature broke the water and when it came down it was just a few yards away from where Gerrard and I were splashing around. Gerrard and I quickly ran from the lake and got into the tow truck. “Do you know what giant tadpoles turn into when they are mature?” asked Gerrard.

I gulped and responded “I’ve never seen them but, they must turn into giant frogs”.

No sooner had I said that and the monster frog had a hold of the skunk bait and had swallowed the entire chain all the way back to the boom on the back of the tow truck. I hit the gas but went nowhere. Gerrard and I each jumped out of the truck and started running back toward the main highway. I turned around for just a second and saw the giant frog swallow the rest of the tow truck. Luckily the tow truck must have filled the giant frog up because he did not pursue us.

Gerrard and I got away but I did lose my uncles tow truck. My uncle was upset until I offered to let him have the Jaguar. He was content with the deal and within a week he found a girlfriend and she consented to marry him. So, I ended up gaining a new aunt out of the experience even though I lost my girlfriends Jaguar. I didn’t mind. My girlfriend was so rich that it meant nothing to her and I liked driving her Trans Am a lot better anyway.

THE NORTHERN MICHIGAN ROAD KILL RODEO

I just got back from the first ever road kill rodeo. It is exclusively held here in Northern Michigan and boy is it great fun for singles like me or for people who have families. It doesn’t matter if you are five years old and full of vinegar or eighty five years old and on an oxygen tank, you can find something fun to do at the road kill rodeo. Of course those people with oxygen tanks should stand a ways back from the barbeques.

The food is great and Mrs. Maggie Vitals won the Macramé Chefs Award for her road kill Michigan chicken in fondue sauce There was some questions brought up as to whether Mrs. Vitals found her Michigan chicken along the road or if she found it floating out on the bay. The rules for the Macramé Award are quite specific in that any deceased flesh must be taken strictly from along the roadside and not from bodies of water or alongside bodies of water such as beaches or riverbanks. Most deceased Michigan chickens (also known as seagulls) are usually found near bodies of water or near restaurant dumpsters. In the end, the judges believed Maggie especially since her fondue sauce made the Michigan Chicken (seagull) taste like a Road Island Red. Maggie was happy to take home the top prize of $3.33. The runner-up received $1.00 and the third prize was 67 cents. There was a total of $5.00 in the kitty. There would have been more but, the sponsor of the rodeo, Mr. Jerrod of Jerrod’s Junk-O-Roma, had the sale of his kidney fall through because of his excessive drinking. With the failure of his kidney deal his whole business was now in jeopardy of being confiscated by the bank.

There were several recipes for road kill possum, raccoon, deer and, squirrel but, the judges picked more exotic dishes. The runner up was MS Denise Roadscrape for her rattlesnake pecan turnovers and, the third prize winner was Mrs. Fowler’s Peking Crow. There was some protest over the crow dish since Mrs. Vitals swore that the dressed out crow looked a lot like her missing little Chihuahua named Russell.

Besides great food there were rides, games and, various venders at the rodeo. The only thing is that there was never any rodeo. It seems that chasseing down dead animals is not much of a challenge. Maybe next year this little detail can be ironed out. Of course whether or not there is a rodeo next year comes down to whether or not Mr. Jerrod can find some organ to sell that has not been affected by thirty years of hammering down 40 oz malt liquors.

ICE FISHING CARNIVAL

By Tim Colin
Ice Fishing Carnival is an event held each year in Michigan. The event takes place out on the ice covering Lake Birdie. This event has been going on for decades and has always been exciting for participants and spectators alike. Many people participate in the sanctioned fishing and snowmobiling events. These events are very safe and great for family entertainment but, I don’t go to watch these events.

Instead, I like to watch the unsanctioned, showoff your snowmobile driving skills event. These people crank up their snow machines for exciting slides across sometimes treacherous ice. Watching people fly across the ice at 100 mph on their snowmobiles is really exciting. I especially like it when someone is going too fast and they are heading directly for someone’s cabin up on the shoreline. Watching the machines flip over and over as the drivers try to swerve out of a certainly fatal skull on cabin siding collision, can really give you a thrill. It is so much better than auto racing. Snow machine riders have almost no protection against frost bite let alone crashing into objects like cabins and ice shanties. Of course if there is an explosion, their clothing is usually highly flammable. Luckily they can roll around in the snow.

Another unsanctioned event that will give an onlooker a cheep but, no less exciting thrill, is the annual “Who is the stupidest person in Michigan?” event. In order to participate in this event you need to own a late model pickup truck with a blue book value of $50,000 or more. Each year there are at least a dozen people who participate in this event. The goal is to see how many of these trucks can park next to each other before the ice gives out underneath them and the vehicles become aquatic habitats for fish and other lake plants and creatures. Boy when that ice gives way those trucks really go down fast. You don’t dare make a trip to the port-a-potty or you might miss the whole show.

I get even greater thrills when the conservation and sheriffs officers start showing up and issuing citations to the truck owners. In addition to loosing their expensive trucks, these dim wits also get a nice hefty fine for polluting the lake. But, wait, there’s more. They also have to pay to have their sunken big trucks hauled out of the lake. For someone who likes to watch really dumb people loose lots of money doing something really stupid well, life does not get any better than a day out on the ice during Ice Carnival.

Of course you don’t have to go to a sanctioned event like on Lake Birdie to watch people do really crazy things out on the ice in Michigan. They do the same thing on every lake and river in the state as soon a there is a thin layer of ice on the water. The only thing is that during Ice Carnival you can get a hot dog and use a port-a-potty while you are waiting for someone to do something really stupid.