“Mama?” The hesitant voice of her son drifted in from outside.

“In here!” Liz Parker called back absently, her attention occupied by the research notes in her hand.

“Mama?” This time the voice came from right outside the study. The tone of voice finally caught Liz’s full attention.

“Caleb?” She questioned as she got up. “Are you alright?”

“Um...”

Liz headed out the door and her mouth dropped open. There stood her son wearing a sheepish expression and covered in mud. Right next to him, similarly attired, stood Mary Guerin.

“What happened to you two?” She was flabbergasted. Her calm, well-behaved little boy was dripping mud onto her carpet, and his hellion of a best friend was not doing much better.

“Well..” Caleb started. He looked helplessly at Mary. “You explain it. It was your idea.”

Mary glared at him. “Its not my fault! I told you that bucket had a hole in it, but you said we could fix it!”

“We needed the bucket and there weren’t any others, we didn’t have a choice. We had to fix it.”

Liz stood by and watched as the two dripping children argued over whose fault it was that the bucket leaked. This was going to be a pretty good show. Maybe she should sit down and enjoy it. But she was a mother, and a responsible one at that. So she stifled the urge and butted in before blood was shed.

“Excuse me?”

The two children stopped mid accusation and turned to look at her. She was doing her best to keep her “serious” face on, but she thought she was probably failing miserably.

“Why did you need a bucket?” Liz asked the two.

“Because the basket broke before we got it out of the tree house.” Caleb explained.

Liz blinked. “What?”

“The jar was too heavy,” Mary put in helpfully.

“What jar?” Liz was quickly losing track of this conversation.

“The jar the tadpoles were in.” Caleb said. His face lit up, “We had about ten of them, they were great!”

“Tadpoles?”

“We’ve been raising them,” Mary said proudly. “They’re almost all grown up now!”

“Frogs?” Liz managed.

“But the basket broke.” Caleb picked up the thread of the story. “So we had to put them in the bucket.”

“And they needed water to live in.” Mary chimed in.

Liz looked from one to the other. Mary was scratching her elbow where the mud was drying, and Caleb’s hair was sticking up all over his head. And this explanation seemed to make perfect sense to them.

“So you put water in the bucket?”

“Well,” Caleb admitted. “We tried. But the frogs kept trying to jump out. And we had to catch them again.”

“That’s when we fell in the mud.” Mary pulled at her shirt, emblazoned with Mr. T. “I hope it comes out. I really like this shirt.”

“So you let the frogs go then?” Liz said hopefully.

“Of course not, Mama!” Caleb looked horrified. “They’re still in the bucket.”

“And where,” Liz swallowed, “Is the bucket?”

Two muddy little fingers pointed to the doorway of the kitchen, where Liz could clearly see a bucket leaking water all over the floor. And two frogs trying to escape.

Liz froze. She hated slimy things. Live ones, anyway. “Ok.”

Unceremoniously, she grabbed the two culprits and dragged them towards the bathroom. She turned on the water and shoved them in it, clothes and all.

Liz left them there to soak and warily approached the kitchen. She peeked in the bucket, trying to count slimy bodies, and came up short three.

She glanced around nervously as she made her way to the phone, carefully checking each step before she put her foot down.

“Hello, Maria?” Liz was standing as still as possible. “You need to come over here and bring Mary a change of clothes. And wear boots.”

There was a pause on the other end. “Do I want to know?” Maria finally questioned.

“Probably not,” Liz sighed. “But it has something to do with a bucket.”