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Coach Canaday reached down into the five gallon plastic bucket that was filled with small and medium sized frogs, and selected a particularly bright green one to show to the group of thirty high school boys.

Of the thirty Hoover High boys in the third period physical education class, twenty-seven were football players, mostly seniors that would graduate with the rest of the class of 1970.  The other three were freshmen dressed in their Air Force Junior ROTC uniforms.

The coach held the frog with both hands and shoved it head first into his mouth; the hind feet of the frog kicking wildly under the coach’s nose.  Then he bit hard down on it, essentially cutting the frog in half.

The boys grimaced as the back end of the frog fell to the floor and flopped around as if it were still attached to its head, which was still entombed in the coach’s closed and now bloody mouth.  He walked over to the three shocked uniformed boys and spit the top half of the frog on Cadet First Lieutenant Mike Lang’s polished, patent leather shoe.  The boy kicked the severed frog head away from him and stepped back to the lockers.

Coach Canaday smiled at the cadets, happily displaying his bloody teeth.

“Now boys … can anyone tell me why I bite the head off of these frogs in front of my ballplayers at the start of school, and before every Hoover High football game?”

When some of the ballplayers were about to answer, he raised his hand to stop them.

“How about you, fat boy,” he said to Cadet Sgt. Wendell Sisk, a cherubic faced, overweight ninth grader who looked like he was about to cry.

“What’s your name son?”

“Wendell Sisk.”

“Wendell!” the coach said, wiping the blood off his lips with his arm.  “What the hell kinda name is that?  Wendell.  Jesus, boy!  Ain’t you gotta nickname or something?  Wendell!”  The coach shook his head disgustedly, grabbed another frog out of the bucket, and walked back to the three frightened boys.

“What the hell are you three nerds doing in my third period class?  This PE period is strictly for players.  No nerds or baby killers allowed!”

Mike Lang spoke up.  “We were told to join this class by the principal, because all the other periods were full.”

“Thank you, General,” the coach said, and turned back to face Wendell.

“Well, Wendell?  Why do I chomp these poor unfortunate creatures?”

He held the frog in front of the overweight boy’s face.”

“I don’t know,” Wendell said.  “You don’t like them … maybe?”

The football players laughed when the coach turned to them and raised his arms up feigning frustration.  He turned back to Wendell.

“Don’t like ‘em.  Hell boy, I stick ‘em in my mouth!  How the hell could I do that if I didn’t like ‘em?”

The players all nodded in agreement.

“No, boy, I like ‘em alright.  I chomp on ‘em cause it shows I’m tough.  And if I’m tough, my players will be tough.  And if my players are tough, then we win football games.  Ya see?”

Wendell and the other two cadets nodded. 

“Are you tough, boy?”

“I guess,” Wendell answered.

“Well here then,” he handed the frog to Wendell, who held it tightly in both hands to keep it from wiggling out of his grip.

“Let’s see you do it.”

The players behind the coach laughed and urged the boy on.

“C’mon,” the coach said, “put it in your mouth baby killer.  Chomp, chomp,”

Wendell put his mouth carefully around the frog’s head and bit down slightly, blowing up the ass end of the frog like a balloon.  When the frog grabbed at his tongue, he tried to pull it out, but before he could, the coach pushed down on top of Wendell’s head with one hand, and up on the boy’s chin with his other, severing the frog to the delight of the now hysterical football players.  Wendell spit the bloody frog’s head out on the concrete floor, ran to the sink, and placed his mouth under the running water until the taste of the frog’s entrails was gone.

“All right!” the coach said.  “Now that we’ve been introduced, I want you all to get dressed out and get your asses out on the field and work out.  You three soldier boys can be the managers.  Managers go get whatever the players want.  You got that, Lang?

“And take Wendell with you and … what’s your name?” he asked the third cadet.

“Gary Peters,” the skinny cadet airman answered.

“And Peters too.  All three of you get the coolers and drag ‘em out to the field.  Now!”

The two boys each grabbed a heavy cooler and carried them out to the football field followed by a very pale Wendell Sisk.

The next day it rained so hard, the players weren’t able to practice outside, so the coach had them place mats down on the locker room floor.  Mike, Wendell, and Gary had removed their uniforms and put on their T-shirts and gym shorts.  They looked pitiful next to the huge muscular football players.  All three cadets still had sore asses from their meeting with Vice-Principal Martin, earlier that day.  It seemed Mr. Martin disagreed with the boys that they had been abused by Coach Canaday, and then proceeded to paddle them just to prove the point.

Eddie Reed, the starting linebacker of the Hoover Eagles, walked over to Gary Peters and put him in a head lock.

“I don’t like the way you look, runt.” he said to Gary, while squeezing hard on the boy’s neck.

“What did I do?” he asked the huge linebacker.  “I didn’t do anything!”

“I just don’t like you,” Reed said, and lifted Gary with one hand while he opened a large locker with his other.  He shoved Gary in the locker, put the combination lock in the latch and spun the dial.

The coach came out of his glass-enclosed office holding a knotted towel.

“Okay boys, here’s what’s up?  We’re gonna play a little fetch.”  Joe, Eddie, you line up on one side and Wayne and Billy on the other.”

The football players went into a three point stance on each side of the mat and looked up at the coach.  Mike and Wendell looked at each other and shrugged, wondering what the players were doing.  Suddenly Coach Canaday threw the towel into the middle of the mat and the four players pounced on it among a bevy of flying knees, elbows, and arms.  Eddie Reed rolled off the mat with the towel in hand and paraded around the room.  Wayne and Billy stood up and massaged their bruised faces where Eddie’s and Joe’s elbows had landed on them.

Coach took the towel from Eddie and looked at Mike and Wendell.

“That game toughens ‘em up for the game Friday night, fly boys.  Let me ask you, Lang.  You think we’re gonna win the big game, Friday?”

Mike thought for a moment before answering.

“Well, I guess if you figure in the statistics from last year’s games and look at who you’re going to be playing, I think the probability of a win is 50/50.”

The coach chuckled.  “Well let me ask you, smart ass, what’s the probability that you get a broken nose when I put you in there to play fetch against Wayne and Eddie?”

He grabbed Wendell and Mike by the back of their T-shirts and pushed them down on the mat.  “Get your asses in a three point stance, now!”  Both boys leaned on one hand and looked up at the smiling football players across from them.

“Go!” the coach said, and threw the towel down on the mat.  Wendell laid down and covered his head with his arms while Mike reached out and made an attempt to grab the towel.  Wayne Patterson jumped on top of Wendell and drove his forearms into the crying boy’s head and arms.  Eddie Reed waited until Mike reached across the mat, before elbowing him in the bridge of his nose, sending Mike’s eyeglasses flying across the room.  Then he head butted Mike, producing a fountain of blood that poured onto the mat.  Mike rolled off the mat holding his face while Eddie once again danced around the locker room with the towel.  The coach took the towel from Eddie and wiped the blood off the mat with it.

“Okay boys, hit the showers.  We got a big game tomorrow.  Lang, Sisk, you wait here a second.”

The coach went to his office and brought out a bucket half-full of water that held the largest bullfrog Mike had ever seen in his life.  The coach placed it in front of the boys.

“Boys, this here bullfrog is gonna sacrifice his life in front of thousands of Hoover High football supporters tomorrow night.  I want you to take care of this fellow and get him to me exactly one half-hour before the game starts.  You understand me?”

Mike and Wendell nodded.

“And, he better be well fed and alive or I will have you playing ‘Fetch’ for a month.  Understand?”

They again nodded.

“Okay, now get your fat asses in the showers and clean off that blood.”

Both boys felt insecure among the huge naked bodies of the football players.  Wendell felt especially nervous washing the blood off his huge belly.

“I’d like to break his nose,” he said to Mike.

Mike nodded in agreement.  “I feel like killing the bastard’s frog.  Just killing it.  I hope he chokes on it when he bites its head off.”

It was then that a thought occurred to the Cadet First Lieutenant.  Maybe there was something he could do.

While they toweled off, two of the offensive linemen grabbed Wendell by the arms and carried him to the entrance door of the locker room.  Coach Canaday came out of his office smiling.  He walked up to the helpless Wendell and pulled off the towel that was wrapped around his hips.  Then the lineman pushed the now naked Wendell out into the hallway and slammed the door shut just as the end of the period bell rang.  Wendell screamed and banged on the door, pleading for the coach to let him back into the locker room, but then ran panic-stricken down the hallway as students poured out of adjacent classrooms and laughed at the huge streaker.

Wendell ran past the chemistry wing, alarming the departing students as they stared at him racing past the classroom windows.  He was completely out of breath when he finally stumbled into the back door of the locker room.  Mike handed him his clothes and placed his arm around his crying Cadet Sgt’s shoulder.  They dressed and walked out of the locker into the hallway where Wendell had to endure the stares of the students.  As they closed the door, a faint knocking sounded from one of the gym lockers.

The next evening, Mike picked Gary Peters up at his house and convinced him to talk with Wendell about going with them to the football game.  Wendell agreed after Gary convinced him that his popularity in the school was on the rise since his streaking episode.

When they arrived at the game, Mike delivered the huge bullfrog to Coach Canaday, alive and well fed as promised.  The boys sat high in the stands where they could watch the coach in his frog biting pre-game rally.

The coach stood on a ten-foot platform erected in front of the stands filled with football fans.  He leaned over to the bucket and pulled out the huge bullfrog and held it high over his head to the screams of the Hoover High fans.

“This is a big frog!” he yelled.  The crowd screamed in agreement.  Even Mike felt himself getting caught up in the excitement.  “I’m gonna bite this big frog’s head off tonight, because the Eagles are gonna have a big season!”

The crowd banged their feet in unison on the steel bleachers emitting a deafening sound through the stadium.

“I hope he does choke on the damn thing,” Wendell Sisk said to Mike and Gary.

“Are you ready?” the coach yelled.

“Yes!” the fans yelled back.

“Are … you … ready!” he screamed.

“Yes!” they replied and then began chanting.

“Bite the frog!  Bite the frog!  Bite the frog!” they yelled together.

Coach Canaday held the frog high and stepped side to side in time with the chant.

“Bite the frog!  Bite the frog!  Bite the frog!”

He lowered the eight inch bullfrog down to his mouth, egged on by the tremendous din of the crowd, and bit as hard as he could on the bumpy frog’s head.  The crowd continued to scream as the coach pulled the headless body away from his mouth, leaving just the entrails hanging down beneath his chin.

Then Mike noticed that the crowd of people nearest the coach suddenly went quiet, as it became obvious the coach was having trouble breathing.  With his eyes wide in terror and his face flush, the coach fell off the back of the stand and landed hard onto the manicured field.

The fans gasped as his players ran to help him.  Vice-Principal Martin stopped the players and called for help from the ambulance drivers standing next to their vehicle parked at the end of the metal stands.  But… it was too late.  The coach was dead.

Wendell, Mike, and Gary stood with the rest of the crowd in the stands to try and see the coach, as the medical personnel surrounded him.

“He looks dead!” Gary Peters said to Mike and the stunned Wendell.  “I think he’s dead!”

Wendell turned to Mike Lang.  “Do you think he choked on the frog, Mike?”

Mike smiled at his friend.  “No, I think he was poisoned by the frog.”

Wendell shook his head.  “How could he be poisoned by a bullfrog?  Bullfrogs aren’t poisonous.”

Mike smiled again.  “They are if you coat them with this,” he said, pulling a test-tube half-full of a clear liquid from his pants pocket.

Wendell turned to Mike and saluted.  “I salute you, Cadet Lieutenant Mike Lang.”

Mike grinned at Wendell and Gary.  “At ease, Cadet Sergeant.”