March 1, 2004
NO TWO GIGS ARE THE SAME
When I was in high school I used to go flounder gigging with my buddies Ken and Mark. You could wade out on the sand shoals off the south end of Tybee Island at low tide of a night and pop two or three flounder. Now, if we hadn't been such miserable misanthropes we would have had dates, but that is for another post. Gigging flounder isn't too bad. The refraction effect makes for a well-considered strike, but in water that shallow, with a good flashlight, it's pretty much turkey shooting.
One night Mark, who lived on La Vida golf course, suggested we gig some bullfrogs. They swarmed like fiends after a good rain, he said.
Years ago I used to see huge bullfrogs. The size of little dogs. I don't see them anymore, probably a result of pesticides and such, but back then there were monsters.
So we went out on the wap-board sheets of water, and cornered our prey. Friends, gigging a huge bulltoad is nothing like gigging a flounder. A flounder squirms and surrenders to the inevitable. A frog tries to make a break for it. Those bastards are all muscle, too, and you have to wrestle the fuckers down. By the time you've subdued him you're ready to puke.
We cut those legs off and cooked them at Mark's, because his parents were going through a divorce and trying to outdrink and outfuck each other, so there was a bit of leeway, so to speak, in his household.
I've never eaten froglegs again. They tasted okay, but that was a nasty hunt. I'll eat gator, I'll eat rattlesnake, but I won't eat four things: possum, squirrel, coon, and froglegs.
That was a disgusting shit of an operation.