Kilvey Hill: When Sociopathic Kids Met Baby Frogs
Photo by Denley Photography on Unsplash
Kilvey Hill loomed behind our street in Swansea like a sleeping giant, all through my childhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Not far in reality, but to a small child's legs it felt like a hike into the wilderness. I didn't go up there often, it always seemed just slightly out of bounds, and to get there we had to walk past the Cem, the cemetery, a place full of ghosts and vampires as far as we were concerned. Still, when I did go, it was usually with a mixture of excitement and unease, the kind of feeling that something unexpected might happen. It usually did.
The main attraction was the old quarry carved into the side of the hill, rough, wild, and scattered with half-believable landmarks. There was the Devil's Table, a stone ledge halfway up the quarry face, reachable by a narrow path, with a reputation for something ominous that none of us could ever quite name. The name alone was enough. I remember finally reaching it after weeks of daring myself, and being sorely disappointed to find just grass. No pentagrams, no satanic relics, not even a burnt crisp packet. We said it was eerie anyway, because admitting it was boring would have shattered the fragile magic of our entire lives.
Nearby was the Devil's Cave, which felt far more promising. Man-made, probably left over from quarrying days, but to us it was a portal to who-knows-where. I don't think I ever made it more than twenty feet in. Dark, wet, full of vague, slithery noises, and we weren't equipped with torches, only bravado, which tends to give out quite quickly in pitch black.
Below all that was the pond, a magical, filthy little pool full of frogspawn, tadpoles, and the odd discarded condom bobbing about like a lost balloon. We used to call them dunkers, though to this day I've no idea why. We'd catch tadpoles in jam jars and take them home, not because we had any plans for them, just because it felt like the thing to do. They usually died after a few days, probably from stress, poor water quality, or sheer boredom.
Now, what follows is awful. Truly. If you're an RSPCA member, or in any way decent and normal, you may want to skip ahead.
One summer afternoon, a boy named Christopher, surname possibly Pike, and I found ourselves at the pond during a veritable baby frog explosion. The whole area was hopping. At some point Chris mentioned that the French ate frogs. Of course we had no idea what that actually involved.
We weren't thinking frogs' legs sautéed in garlic, we were thinking, what do frogs taste like?
So we lit a small fire. And we threw a few baby frogs on it.
I know. It's appalling. I wince writing it now. But in my defence, we were six or seven. I like to think most of them got away. Those that didn't, we certainly didn't eat, they looked too horrifying even to godless, sociopathic six-year-olds. My brother David began showing similar signs of psychopathy around the same age, but his victims were much smaller.
It wasn't cruelty so much as a mix of curiosity and stupidity, and it remains one of those grim little memories that sticks. I don't think we ever did anything like it again.
Well, there was that kitten....