The Perfect Spring Evening...

“I have never seen so many frogs in my life!”  “There are so many hopping around I can’t possibly scoop them all up!” “Woops, lost that one!” “I want earplugs!!!” These statements, along with spring peeper music loud enough to make you plug your ears, are what you would have encountered had you joined us on a rowdy adventure a few weeks ago.
It was one of those evenings in March that seemed like the very essence of spring. The sun was quietly sinking behind the dark silhouetted oak trees on the horizon, sending silky soft streams of cherry and ginger tinted light into the evening air, and gently touching the undersides of the towering piles of clouds with a flushed pink. To my right stretched a vast expanse of emerald green grass, dotted with cows of all colors grazing freely and lowing softly. Between the clouds a sapphire sky was peeking out with glee on its face, happy to help compose an evening as beautiful as this one. 
On the side of the road on which I stood dwelt an insignificant little ditch, full of muddy brown water and slimy water creatures. On the far edge of this ditch, under the bedraggled tufts of grass growing there, was a little spring peeper frog. In the gathering gloom he would have been well hidden, but his happy little song gave him away. I squatted there and watched him put his whole body into singing. Every breath was used to produce one clear, shrill note. Truly, here was a lesson in devotion! Not one little rest did he take, for he understood that singing was his responsibility, and he was determined to do his very best.
My reverie was soon broken, however, by an excited shout from one of my cousins, “Quick, open the can! I have five frogs in my hand and they are jumping out!” I stood to see my grandma cautiously opening the lid to a large can containing oodles of frogs. As Isaiah carefully stuffed his contribution in, the rest of us exhorted him to hurry, as our catches were escaping too. Someone noticed that a little frog had escaped onto the road and scooped him up. This commotion was simply because we wanted some of these little frogs in the cow pond close to our house, but I am sure it did not appear that way. You see, my Mother, Aunt Melanie, cousins Isaiah and Elijah and I were all running along the humble ditch collecting handful after handful of frogs and dumping them in the partially-water-filled-mostly-frog-filled can.
This madness went on for quite some time, and before we were done my Grandma had walked the short distance to the house, thinking her ears might explode from all the noise. Finally the rest of us realized that we could stay up all night catching frogs if we were not careful, so we too walked home. 
Of course, it would never do catch so many frogs and not count them, so someone filled a huge glass jar half full of water and and got out a pad of paper. First, everyone made a guess on how many frogs there were, ranging from 64 to 368. Then, one by one we dropped those little froggies into the jar. Plop…Plop…Plop…Plop…it seemed to go on forever.  My Aunt Melanie patiently sat and tallied all the plops, until at last every frog was in the jar. Several did escape during the transfer, but we did our best to catch them all. That poor jar was quite a sight, filled with hundreds of screaming, jumping, little frogs, clinging to it’s sides and trying push their way out of it’s narrow opening. 
After the count, we carried that jar to our pond, and tried to dump those frogs out. Unfortunately, some of them didn’t understand that they needed to crawl out of the jars top, and it took many successive washing to get every one out. 
Oh, I didn’t tell you how many frogs we caught yet, did I? Sorry. We caught 234.