Frog and Antelope

Published: Feb. 17, 2010, 7:21 p.m.

“The Frog and the Antelope” is a Native American story from the Kootenai (or Kootenay) tribe about a race between, appropriately enough, a frog and an antelope. It's one of many such race tales from many different races of human being, such as Aesop's “The Tortoise and the Hare”. In this case, however, the race is won by trickery rather than pluck and perseverance, so perhaps it doesn't illustrate very sportsmanlike conduct. On the other hand, the trickery is used to give a braggart his comeuppance.

We chose this tale because at the moment many different kinds of races and athletic contests are taking place in Vancouver, British Columbia for the 2010 Winter Olympics. And guess what? The Kootenai tribe, in addition to being located in Montana and Idaho, also has roots in British Columbia.

We'd love to be in Vancouver now – we loved the city and BC itself when we visited a few years ago – but it's been quite chilly enough where we have been for the past few weeks: the Sunshine State. And on this podcast we tell you about our recent exploration of The Everglades, including an overnight canoe trip to an island just offshore. We speak of it as one of 1000 purported islands in the system; actually the number should have been 10.000 (yes that's TEN thousand)!

We hope you have a gold medal month.

Thanks for listening! Dennis (Frog) and Kimberly (Narrator, Antelope)