I know, it has been a couple of weeks since my last story but the reason for my latest absence is simple – I have been on my holidays.  Yes, Herring Gull Harry, Teacup and I headed off to the coast for a few days with our buckets and spades and, not forgetting of course, our fishing nests too.

Ah, it was a frogtastic week.  It rained every day and we frogs were in heaven.  On our first day, we explored the local beach and found some rock pools which went out into the sea which we had fun exploring.  The further out we went, the more interesting they got.  Some had long bits of seaweed in them waving about in the water and others had what looked like the sea’s version of mushrooms growing off the rocks.  Very weird, I thought.

Then, we came across one that was full of small fish swimming around in circles and we found some mussels so put them into the bucket and I saw a crab.

I thought he would be easy to catch and put into my fishing net but no, the little rascal had very sharp claws and just as I thought I had him and turned around to put him into my bucket, he escaped.  Yes, he used his claws to cut a hole in MY fishing net and was running sideways along the rocks.  For a clumsy-looking creature, he couldn’t half move!

Well, I hopped after him, frogettes, determined that he was not going to escape me a second time.  I picked up Herring Gull Harry’s blue bucket and and when I was close enough to him (we were almost in the sea at this point, frogettes) and flung the bucket over him.  It worked.  He was trapped and I could hear the happy sound of his claws banging against the wall of the plastic bucket.

Then Herring Gull Harry piped up, “it is all very well what you have done, Errol, but now that you have trapped your crab, how are you going to get him home.”

Good point.  I scratched my head.  Then inspiration struck.  I got Teacup’s orange bucket and put it against the edge of the rock pool.  I then carefully moved the blue bucket slowly across the rock and over the orange bucket and finally, after what seemed liked forever, I heard the plomp sound of the crab falling into the orange bucket.

I peered inside and was amused to see one very cross looking crab looking at me and waving his claws aimlessly in the air.  He was trapped and I had my supper.

This called for a celebratory glass of pumpkin juice.

‘Till next time,

E