Frogging means family, friends and fun

Image
Body

Waiting on the midnight hour is most often reserved for New Year’s Eve, but in south Louisiana, there’s another night of the year that the arrival of midnight has got nothing to do with Auld Lange Syne, sparklers and fringed blowout noisemakers.
It’s the opening night of a new frogging season, and the night’s festive accessories are rubber boots, head lamps, flashlights and crawfish bags.
Courtney Smith, of Church Point, says, “It’s pretty much the same group of friends that we go frogging with each year. I don’t remember my first frogging trip, but I do remember the trip when I caught my first frog. Before that, it was just Kyle (Smith’s husband) and the guys that would go. Once the kids got old enough, I started going, too.
“We all do it as a family. The more you catch, the more excited you are for the kids.”
It’s 8 p.m. on May 31, and the 2019-2020 frogging season begins at midnight June 1. The Smith’s farm shop behind their home is teeming with adults and children dining on boiled crawfish, shrimp and crab legs and reminiscing about previous frogging season opening night celebrations and hunts on the Smith’s farm. The liveliness of the evening can be likened to a Cajun version of the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square.
Those in the crowd at the Smith’s shop, located north of Church Point, include the Smith’s and their children Haven, Ava and Gage; Leslie and Brandon Trahan, of Swords, and their children Caroline, Ethan and Mylie; Lee and Aimee Miller, of Eunice, and their children Copeland and Laura Kate; Katie and Caleb Cart, of Eunice, with two of their children, Sloane and Hallee; Brandon “Trigger” Colletti, of New Roads; Travis “Cheese” Ledoux and his wife, Amy, of Church Point, and their children, Coy and Caitlyn; Krista and Jimmy Stelly, of Swords, and their child, Aiden; Madison Scanlan, of Church Point; and Matt and Ashley Freese, of Booneville, Missouri, and their children Kendall and Jayde.
“I go hunting in Missouri, and I met Matt up there,” Caleb says. “I told him, if there was ever a time of year to come down here, it was the opening night of frogging season.”
The Freeses aren’t the only ones to get their introduction to frogging through a trip with the Smiths.
“I’ve been frogging since I was 18 — Kyle brought me on my first trip,” Leslie says.
By 10 p.m., the children are chomping at the bit, and the adults give them permission to cruise the farm fields on side-by-sides to scout for frogs.
An adult tries to give a frog-leery child a pep talk before they head out.
“Frogs have no teeth and no claws,” the adult says.
“They’ll just lick you to death,” he adds, laughing.
About 11:30 p.m., the hunters prepare for their late night excursion. Rubber boots are pulled on, crawfish sacks, flashlights and head lamps are gathered and mosquito spray is applied, or more like doused, onto every hunter. The crowd separates into groups — two four-wheelers with two riders on each, three side -by-sides — Courtney, Leslie and several children on one and rest of the children split between two other side- by-sides — and Kyle, the Millers, Brandon Trahan, Scanlan and Travis load into a crawfish boat that Kyle has driven up to the front of the shop.
But a bit of bad luck strikes as everyone gets comfortable in the boat — a hydraulic hose springs a leak before the boat even hits the water.
“To my truck,” Kyle yells as everyone else scatters into the night. “We’ll go get another boat.”
On the journey to the other boat, all four windows on Smith’s truck are rolled down, and the hunters in the cab and in the bed of the truck shine their flashlights into the ditches on Smith’s property as he drives slowly across the farm.
Every few minutes, “Frog” is yelled, and Smith stops the truck for everyone to clamber out and to try their luck at landing a frog, often returning successfully with a catch. At one point, Lee, Kyle and Travis all make a dive into a ditch in pursuit of the same frog, and Kyle emerges victorious, frog hoisted in the air, as he yells, “Blue Jays,” which seems to be the battle cry for the evening. (The St. Edmund Catholic School mascot is a blue jay, and the Smiths are alumni of the school. Several of the children on the hunt, including the Smith’s children, are also students at St. Edmund.)
The hunters finally make their way into the set of fields where the boat is located, and for the next 30 minutes, the group patrols the levee road on foot in search of frogs. By the time they arrive at the boat, about 15 frogs have been dropped into a crawfish sack.
Once in the boat, which sports a “Blue Jays” bumper sticker, Smith drives, Aimee, Ledoux and Scanlan spotlight and Lee dives for the frogs. A run in one cut of the field yields about 10 more frogs, and everyone votes to head back to the shop to compare catches with the other hunters.
Like moths to a flame, activity and lights at the shop catch the eye of the other hunters, and just before 2 a.m., everyone has made their way back to the starting point.
Courtney and Leslie hop off their side-by-side with two crawfish sacks of frogs.
“I had a lot of sack holders and spot lighters with me,” Courtney says, laughing.
“Courtney is super aggressive about her frogging — if I don’t hold that light right, I hear it,” Leslie says, laughing.
“I even caught two at a time tonight,” Courtney says.
“The biggest one was this big,” she adds as she holds up her hands to about the size of a gumbo bowl. “It got out of the bag though.”
“The crawfish sack opened, and we were chasing frogs everywhere,” Leslie says, laughing.
Courtney makes her way over to the shop’s scale with her sacks of frogs, 27 frogs in total, as well as the bag from Kyle’s group. Courtney’s haul comes in at 23 pounds and her husband’s comes in at 21 pounds.
She lets out a “Whoop” as she skips off across the shop with her frogs, victorious over her husband’s frogging crew, but in the end, the children are the winners. Their strength was in numbers — their bags of frogs for the night total 47 pounds.
The Cajun summertime rival of New Year’s Eve has come to an end, and the rubber boots, head lamps, flashlights and crawfish sacks are stowed until the next night’s hunt.