"Hey John, watch out," Seth the college student said, pointing to his mud covered legs. "I just found a hole back there."

OK, I told him.

I'll be careful.

His shorts, now an I-just-fell-into-a-bog kind of brown, used to be khaki and clean, used to look like a pair of shorts and not like a wardrobe piece from Swamp Thing.

Large clumps of algae and mud clung to his kneecaps and pockets and I laughed as I told him to have fun doing laundry later on.

No response.

He tossed down his frog net, tipped over his knee-high waders and I watched as a stream of murky water and several large chunks of something disgusting cascaded out.

Glad I'm not him, I thought.

I was sloshing around the outside of this pond with a camera in hand, a notebook in my pocket and waders pulled up to my hips, trying not to fall in.

Standing on the edge of the shore, you could see that the water was several feet deep and that where you were standing was actually only several inches of floating vegetation - vegetation that could easily give way with one wrong step.

One wrong step I was determined not to make.

This was part of the Flathead National Forest's amphibian survey, something they do every year to gather information and let kids to coat themselves in sludge for fun.

The group I was following around found a few spotted frogs, a few salamander larvae and some tadpoles around the edges of the water and each time they found something I hustled over to try and snap a picture.

I was chasing a small frog with the camera when the majority of the group started going around a bend, heading to the other side of the pond.

So I got up, started walking carefully through the footsteps already there in the muck and headed toward the rest of the group.

Step one - solid.

Step two - a little soft.

Step three - and I'm in.

Waist deep.

As a kid, I used to play this game called "quicksand." We'd throw pillows on the floor and the goal was to navigate the entire house without touching the carpet. We'd crawl on tables, the couch and anything else we could tip over and stand on.

If you touched the carpet, you were out.

Right about then, literally stuck in a rut, I was hoping for a pillow.

With my legs not going anywhere for a while, I handed the camera to one of the people in the group as I tried to crawl out of the mess.

Gotta protect the hardware, especially since it's not mine.

Then there were some laughs as I struggled, some clicks of the shutter for blackmail purposes and then there was me, tainted by yet another easily avoidable accident, just another in a long, long line of them.

Let me put it to you this way, most of my phone calls to my parents start this way: "Well, I have some good news and some bad news…"

That's when I realized the tracks I had been following were Seth's, the same tracks that nearly sent him to a watery grave and gave me several pockets full of slime.

You know, it seemed like a good idea at the time, following someone else's lead.

They say that in frog hunting, just like in life, it really is better to lead than to follow.

I tend to agree.

John Van Vleet is a reporter for the Hungry Horse News and a train wreck of a man.