Boggenskrogin

"It s coming from the ice hole over here," Jean whispered, stumbling around it on her skates.

"There are other reasons for cracks in ice," Pop said. "Sometimes the water on which the ice rests will slowly seep into the fine sugar sands, causing the thickest ice to settle a bit at a time. And when the bog critters chew holes in the earthen dam, a rush of water will flow from the bog, leaving only bog gas to pump up the ice and keep it from sagging."

"What if there s no bog gas?" I asked.

"Johnny plugs the holes with muskrat soup, or he plants a lot of ice trees to hold up his roof," Pop explained. He began starting to sound funny in the head again.

"Oh, how awful!" Betty exclaimed. "Muskrat soup, isn t there anything else he could do beside hurting poor little creatures?"

"The big shell of a very old snapping turtle will sometimes hold up the ice," Pop said. Now he sounded like my science teacher, Mr. Knowitall.

ZZZzzz-harrrumpf-ZZZZ! rose a noise from the ice hole. Jean, who s too young to be afraid, stuck her head over the hole and hollered down into it, "Is that a man or a muskrat down there?"

"There must be a two-legged tree frog stuck in a sluice gate down there!" Pop shouted into the ice hole.

"It sounds like a man snoring," Betty whispered.

"That Johnny never does finish his bog work," Pop shouted, trying his best to be heard down the ice hole. "He s likely taking a short work break those autumn berries do some powerful fermenting beneath ice, and likely as not they ve knocked off his beard-stuffed bog socks. Hey, Johnny, isn t that what happens when bog critters don t chew enough breather holes in the ice ...?"

"I hear you, you buncha turkle snappers! Can t a drowned land feller get to go belly-whistling down Whoopeescoop Road in a water bed?" grumbled the voice from beneath bog ice.

"Oh, how grungy a man sleeping and living in a cold, wet place beneath ice that s about to fall in on him," Betty shuddered at the thought.