about 3 years ago I got an amazing summer job working for a small family owned print house. We didn't do anything y'all would recognize (unless you're sociology majors) - - - we did sociology journals, training manuals for paralegals, stuff like that, with a few wedding invitations/advertisements on the side. The owner was the one that hired me and for some reason decided I warranted my own office, so at the tender age of 20, here I found myself in an 8X8 office with real walls and a ceiling- - - no cubicle for me! Well I'm sitting in my office one day designing a logo for some upstart company (my first experience with photoshop, BTW) when my friend Jack popped by to see me. We were talking, and the power went out. Seems a construction crew across the road had dug through the power lines. Since we weren't gonna get anything done, they gave us the rest of the day off, so Jack suggested that we go fishing.

I rarely fish- - - I don't like the idea of shoving a sharp hook into a living creature's mouth, for one, and I seem to have difficulty outsmarting the fish anyway because none of them ever take my bait, so I was reluctant, and thought of the first excuse that came to mind. . . "But Jack, there's no river around here. . we'd have to drive so far that it'd be too late to fish."

Jack of course pointed out that we're in St. Paul, MN, and the Mississippi runs right through it. So, my excuse shot down, I found myself in Jack's 1979 Ford truck (which hadn't been cleaned out since it was bought new) bouncing down the access road to a park beside the river.

Since I don't like hurting the fish, when Jack wasn't looking I slipped a shot on the end of the line, and cast off. As far as he knew, it was hooked, and I figured what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. Well I'm sitting there pretending to fish when I hear this weird noise. It was kind of a bubbling sound. I looked around and about 20 feet out into the river, right in front of a big flat rock, I saw a bunch of bubbles. I figured a turtle was gonna pop up and sun himself, and since I was bored with fake-fishing, I kept my eye on the bubbles.

Well it wasn't a turtle that came out of the water, but a frog. This was no garden variety frog. This was the biggest frog I'd ever seen. I've heard of South American frogs that are as big as people's head and that have a nasty habit of plopping down on people from the trees, but this frog took the cake. I whispered for Jack to come over and pointed to the frog. Jack, who isn't always the smartest guy, yelled out "Holy @#$@! that's the biggest frog I've ever seen!" I quickly quieted the dork down so he wouldn't scare it, because I wanted to watch this frog some more.

So I'm watching the frog when I hear a buzzing noise. I looked to the left and flying along the river was a dragonfly. It was flying straight at the frog and I figured it was about to become the frog's lunch. Based on the size of the frog, I wouldn't have been surprised at a 5 foot tongue, so this was something I wanted to see!

Sure enough, the frog spotted the dragonfly and was clearly getting ready to catch him when I heard another bubbling sound, and out of the water slid a huge snake. Now admittedly I've seen bigger snakes (but only in zoos and on that Crocodile Hunter show with that nutty australian guy that runs around kissing the most deadly snake in the world) but it was the biggest snake I'd ever seen around Minnesota, which generally only has little garter and grass snakes.

Jack saw the snake too, and turned to me and said "Brandon, that snake's gonna eat that frog!"

"Nawww" says the wise naturalist me. "That frog's gonna eat that snake!"

Well we were both bored with fishing at this point, and we've always bet on everything, so we ended up betting $10 on which animal would eat who. I bet on the frog, and he bet on the snake. A few seconds later I could just feel that $10 flying out of my pocket and into his because that snake stretched out and grabbed the back end of the frog in it's mouth. The frog was too big for it to swallow in one gulp, but snakes can detach their jaws to swallow bigger prey, and that's exactly what it was doing.

Just as Jack was getting excited about winning the bet, though, the frog did something I could hardly believe. He turned around and grabbed the snake's tail in his mouth and started to eat the snake!

Jack and I didn't know what to think of this. We'd never seen two animals actually eating each other, and were starting to wonder how we'd settle this bet! So of course, being male, we upped it to $25.

Well we kept watching and the snake kept chewing on the frog and the frog kept chewing on the snake until just a little bit of the snake was sticking out of the frog's mouth, and just a little bit of the frog was sticking out of the snake's mouth. That looked pretty weird, and the bet was still pretty heated, so we upped it again to $30. For a college student, that's serious money (well. . .pizza money anyway) so I was getting kinda nervous.


Just then, they both took a big bite at exactly the same time, and disappeared. I never saw either one again.