A night as fine as frog’s fur

The race was on down Schultz Road near Iota on a recent hot summer night.
J.P. Ward, of Jennings, said, “I bet we’re going to smoke ya’ll.”
Jacob Zaunbrecher, of Iota, said, “We’ll see about that.”
The evening’s match had nothing to do with who had the faster vehicle, and crawfish boats do move pretty slow anyway. The night had everything to do with who had the most frogs before curfew, and a late-night, illicit activity like drag racing was not on the menu — fried frog legs were.
Iota, located in Acadia Parish, is surrounded by farms and seemingly endless acres of crawfish ponds. Children of rice and crawfish farmers are often schooled in the art of hand grabbing frogs at an early age, and such was the case with Jacob and his younger siblings Sadie and Ethan. Their father, Wendell Zaunbrecher has brought the hunters on frogging trips since they were children.
“I can’t even remember my first trip, so you know I was little,” Jacob said.
Frogging season opened at midnight June 1, but instead of waiting up ‘til midnight or going to bed and setting an alarm for 11:30 p.m., many frog hunters wait until the first full night of the season to make the first trip — it’s the unofficial kick off to summer in rice-farming country.
Frog hunters can take bullfrogs and pig frogs using any visible light and mechanical devices such as frog catchers or with devices that puncture the skin, like gigs and spears, but dyed-in-the-wool hunters like the Zaunbrecher siblings just use their hands. Hunters of age to have a fishing license must also have a basic resident or non-resident fishing license to catch frogs. There is no limit on the number of frogs hunters can take, just size limits.
Like his older brother, Ethan doesn’t recall his first-ever frogging trip, but he did recall one of the more unforgettable outings.
“One night, Jacob got the boat stuck,” Ethan said. “We had to call Dad to bring us a chain. We sat there for a little while, but it felt like a long time.”
That particular trip also “stuck” out in Sadie’s mind.
“Every time we go, we make so many different memories,” she said. “The night Jacob got the boat stuck on the levee, dad had to help us out, and he laughed at us.”
Sadie said she started tagging along on trips when she was five or six, and she caught her first frog on her first trip.
“My dad pulled the boat right up to the frog, and I stuck my hand out and caught it,” she said.
“I love going in the boat and making memories. When new friends come hunting with us, I encourage them to try catching one, but some of them don’t always try it.”
On the first full evening of the 2016-2017 frogging season, the Zaunbrecher siblings were inducting frogging first-timer Jinsi Bourque of Iota into the fold. They were also joined by Ward, Lauren Daigle, of Iota, and Levi Manuel, also of Iota.
The hunters were not the only ones in the area out hunting for amphibians. Just northwest of the fields Zaunbrechers and their guests were hunting, a crawfish boat driven by an adult and teeming with children, made its way in a field next to the highway.
It was 9 p.m., and the mosquito population was out in full force. The hunters dosed themselves in mosquito repellant and split into two groups — Jacob, Ethan, Daigle and Bourque in one boat and Sadie, Ward and Manuel in the another. Each group would hunt in an area of about 60 to 80 acres.
The two boats of froggers soon pushed off, and the hunt began. Jacob captained the boat as he shined a flashlight along the bank of the pond, looking for the eyes of the frogs, which are often compared to shining diamonds in the dark water. Ethan took a place at the front of the boat, scanning the levee and open waters with another flashlight. Just moments into the hunt, Ethan hopped out of the boat and plucked up his first frog of the season.
The frogging action was quick and steady, and the hunters took turns clamoring out of the boat and after the frogs. Once the hunters climbed back aboard with their prize, the frogs were placed in a crawfish sack. At least once, Ethan climbed back into the boat with a frog in each hand, and other times, two hunters had to wade out because several frogs were stacked up in one area, requiring more than one set of hands to get them back to the boat.
Around 10 p.m., the hunters found themselves on the receiving end of a bright beam of light, but it wasn’t a giant frog out for revenge. A police car, likely driven by an Acadia Parish Sheriff’s deputy, turned his side light into the lake before apparently realizing why a boatload of people were on a late night cruise on a crawfish pond and heading on his way.
Jacob stopped the boat occasionally so he could get out and join in the fun. On one of his trips out of the boat, Jacob had to pursue a frog in the water, up the bank and onto a gravel road, and he was victorious in his chase, returning to the boat, frog in hand. Soon the hunters had one sack full of frogs, and Bourque retrieved an empty sack from the front of the boat.
“Every trip is a favorite, as long as a lot of frogs are caught, but we are catching fewer and fewer frogs each year,” Jacob said as the boat chugged along in the dark and Daigle hopped out to retrieve a frog. “It’s great to spend time like this with friends and bring friends who have never been before and give them pointers.
“Most of the time I’m driving the boat, but I’ll stop the boat to get out and catch some.”
Jacob said the summer of frogging fun usually comes to a close when school starts or when the ponds are drained in the fall.
“We might go on four-wheelers by the rice fields, too,” he added.
At 10:30 p.m., Jacob pulled the boat back up at the starting point, and he laid the two crawfish sacks full of frogs across the front of the boat. Each sack had about 35 to 40 frogs in it, and Jacob estimated he and his fellow hunters had harvested about 75 frogs.
“I wonder if the others are even back yet,” Jacob wondered aloud before Sadie, Ward and Manuel popped out of the shadows.
“We’ve been back,” Ward said. “The light died, and we only caught a few. We did see a lot of snakes in the other field, though.”
“I didn’t think ya’ll would catch a lot in that field,” Jacob said. “There’s a lot of grass in there. Most of our frogs were on the edge of the ponds, but we caught about 10 or 15 out in the open water.”
The group gathered for few cell phone photos, posting the evening’s harvest to social media and seeing how other hunters had made out. Another hunter’s posted photo showed frogs placed in the shape of the numbers “743” in a nod to how many frogs had been caught on an excursion. One photo commenter simply asked, “Are there any left?”
“It’s not so fun to clean them, but when we sit down to eat them, we always talk about the trip,” Jacob said.
“I’m going to dip my fried frog legs in ketchup,” Ethan said, laughing.