MYSTERY:"Who Let The Frogs Out"

Mr. Womback arrived at his biology classroom at 8:00 am, as usual. Waiting for him in the hallway was Matilda Robbens, one of his eleventh grade students. She was carrying a red and white plastic cooler, the kind you pack picnic lunches in. Only, this cooler seemed to be shaking, all on its own.

“I got your frogs, Mr. Womback!” the freckle-faced tomboy yelped, holding up the agitated cooler. “Finally! Thirty frogs, like you wanted.”

“Good,” Mr. Womback responded. He unlocked the door to his classroom, flicked on the lights and walked inside. Then he unlocked the door to the storage room behind his front desk. Matilda trailed after him with her jumpy cooler.

“Here, put it on the counter, Matilda, next to the aquarium,” Mr. Womback instructed.

The girl set the cooler down on the black counter that ran the length of the narrow room, next to a large, empty aquarium. “It took me two whole weeks to catch all of them, Mr. Womback. Like you’ve taught us in class, the frog populations are way down, and I had a really hard time finding all you wanted. Really hard!”

“Five dollars a piece, Matilda,” Mr. Womback intoned, opening up the cooler and looking down at thirty healthy green and brown leopard frogs. “As we agreed.” One of the amphibians leaped up and almost hit the man in the nose, and Mr. Womback began transferring the rambunctious hoppers from the cooler to the aquarium.

“Ten dollars each,” Matilda countered.

Just then Kyle Kravetsky, the science department’s student lab assistant, stuck his head in the doorway.

“Here, Kyle,” Mr. Womback said, “help me get these frogs into the aquarium.”

“Not a chance, Teach,” Kyle grimaced, watching with distaste as a large green spotted specimen wriggled out of Mr. Womback’s hands and hit the counter hopping.“I’m not touching those slimy reptiles. Snakes, either. You don’t pay me enough for that.”

Mr. Womback snorted, grabbing up the rogue frog and squirting it into the aquarium.

“Speaking of pay …” Matilda reminded him.

“I’m sorry, Matilda. Five dollars per frog is all I have in the budget. I’ll get a check made up that you can pick up in class this afternoon.”

It was Matilda’s turn to snort, as she stomped out of the classroom.

“Speaking of checks, Mr. W, you think you can advance me my hundred dollars for this week?” Kyle asked. “See, I’ve got a date with-”

“You know you left the doors unlocked the other night?” Mr. Womback interrupted, turning on the thin, straw-haired teenager. “Sergio Ramos, the night custodian, informed me that when he came to clean the rooms at 6:00 pm Monday night, both doors were unlocked. I’ve warned you about that before, Kyle. With a key, comes responsibility. We have expensive equipment and toxic chemicals”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry about that, Mr. W. Won’t happen again. Now, about that advance …”

“See you in class this afternoon,” Mr. Womback dismissed the boy, as he bobbled the last of the squirming frogs into the aquarium.

When the biology teacher held up a frog to his eleventh grade class later that afternoon, he announced that they would be dissecting them during Friday’s class. A mixture of cheering and eewing went up, along with Marnie Pepper’s hand.

“I protest putting these innocent frogs to death, Mr. Womback!” the small, redheaded bundle of energy stated. As a self-described ‘animal activist’, the girl was concerned with the welfare and ethical treatment of all creatures, amphibious or otherwise.

“So noted,” Mr. Womback sighed. “Just like with the worms, Marnie, you can leave the classroom and study a dissection on the computer, while the real dissections are taking place.”

Marnie folded her arms over her chest and further declared, “I want it on record that the use of animals for experimental purposes is-”

“So noted!” Mr. Womback declared back, sticking the wriggling frog into the pocket of his lab coat.

A half hour after class concluded at 3:30, as Mr. Womback was locking his classroom door, he caught Sergio Ramos sauntering down the hallway. “I hope you do a better job of cleaning my class and storage rooms than you did last night, Sergio. Half of the wastepaper baskets weren’t even emptied and some of the lab tables weren’t wiped down. Not to mention, you broke another jar of calf brains.”

The lanky janitor glanced angrily around at the students snickering at him getting chewed out by Mr. Womback. “Hey, man,” he said, trying to act cool, “I just came to watch the volleyball game. I’m not on the clock ‘til six, you know.”

Mr. Womback grunted. Then he joined the large body of students and teachers heading towards the gymnasium to watch the girls’ volleyball team take on the school’s cross-town rival.

Marnie Pepper turned out to be the star of the game, her parents and a crowd of cheering admirers sweeping her and the rest of the team out of the school for a victory party at a local pizzeria right after the game ended at 6:00. Sergio Ramos locked the doors to the school shortly thereafter.

Mr. Womback’s first clue that something was wrong the next morning was when he spotted two frogs sitting in a puddle in the teachers’ parking lot. They eyed him suspiciously, and he eyed them. His second clue was when he found both the door to his classroom and his storage room unlocked. His final clue was when he saw the aquarium sitting empty, the window above it slightly ajar.

“Morning, Teach,” Kyle Kravetsky said, strolling into the storage room. “Hey, where are all the croakers?”

Mr. Womback gritted his teeth. “Apparently, they somehow escaped through a closed window sometime after I left the classroom – locked! – at 4:00 pm yesterday afternoon. Kyle!?”

As the teenager blushed redder than a Panamanian poison frog, Matilda Robbens popped her head into the room. “What’s going on? Hey, where’d all the frogs go?”

“They were here when I restocked those test tubes around five o’clock like you asked, Mr. W.” Kyle gulped. “I left a little while after that to refill Mr. Ludwig’s Bunsen burners in the chemistry lab. I, uh, think … I locked the doors.”

Mr. Womback simmered like pan-fried frogs’ legs, staring at the boy.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Womback,” Matilda piped up, “I can get some frogs pretty quick – for a price.”

Mr. Womback barged past his two students and out into the classroom proper. His glaring eyes took in the overflowing wastepaper baskets and the puddles of formaldehyde on the lab tables.“Looks like Ramos didn’t even bother cleaning my classroom at all last night!” he growled.

Then the irate biology teacher’s blood pressure dropped like a frog’s in winter mud hibernation, as he suddenly realized what happened. “I think I know who let the frogs out,” he hypothesized.

.................................................................................................................. SOLUTION: Matilda Robbens let the frogs out. She gave herself away when she said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Womback … I can get some frogs pretty quick …” Before, she’d told Mr. Womback it had taken her “two whole weeks” to collect thirty frogs, due to the declining frog population. And that should still be the case, unless she knew there were frogs to be found right in the immediate vicinity – where she’d released them the day before. Kyle Kravetsky’s was not the frog-freer. He’d expressed his aversion to handling “slimy reptiles” earlier (along with his ignorance). Marnie Pepper couldn’t have released the frogs, because she never had the opportunity. She played in the volleyball game and then left the school immediately afterwards. And judging from the dirty evidence, Sergio Ramos didn’t even go into Mr. Womback’s classroom or storage room the night before – either to clean them, or play hop-frog out the window. ..................................................................................................................

Posted in: Mysteries