Chigwooltz the second, he of the green stone and the patient
disposition, was still sitting in the same place. The sun had turned
round; it was now warming his other side. His all-day sun bath
surprised me so that I let him alone, to see how long he would sit
still, and went fishing for other frogs.
Two big ones showed their heads among the pads some twenty feet apart.
Pushing up so as to make a triangle with my canoe, I dangled a red
ibis impartially between them. For two or three long minutes neither
moved so much as an eyelid. Then one seemed to wake suddenly from a
trance, or to be touched by an electric wire, for he came scrambling
in a desperate hurry over the lily pads. Swimming was too slow; he
jumped fiercely out of water at the red challenge, making a great
splash and commotion.
Fishing for big frogs, by the way, is no tame sport. The red seems to
excite them tremendously, and they take the fly like a black salmon.
But the moment the first frog started, frog number two waked up and
darted forward, making less noise but coming more swiftly.
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