U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski served up a delightfully amphibious metaphor recently to describe Sen. Mitch McConnell's efforts to line up Republican senators behind his health-care bill. "The majority leader is trying to keep all the frogs in the wheelbarrow," she said.

Murkowski's image of a slew of slippery frogs in a wheelbarrow — some slithering over its sides, others poised for a clean leap out — provided a refreshing alternative to the cliche "trying to herd cats."

But she didn't invent this froggy phrase. McConnell himself used it last April to describe his efforts to confirm Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, and House Speaker John Boehner deployed it in May of 2012: "[It's] hard to keep 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to get a bill passed."

As Republicans try to drain the swamp, they seem especially eager to corral and control its green residents.

But where did this phrase originate? Like a kid with a net, a pond and a free summer afternoon, I scoured scads of American slang dictionaries, where I discovered "frog-choker" (a heavy rain), "frogsticker" (a knife) and "frog-eyed gravy" (don't ask), but no "frogs in a wheelbarrow."

Of course, many regional phrases sit undetected in rural ponds; they don't just leap joyfully into the nets of linguists collecting regional expressions.

Like Captain Quint in "Jaws," I knew I was going to need a bigger net. So I got one. The earliest citation I found on the internet was a post on a British limerick website in 1994: "Project Management is a lot like pushing a wheelbarrow of frogs to market."

Two years later, in the December, 1996, issue of The Progressive, activist Jim Hightower furnished this ribbiting account of organizing a populist movement: "It will be kind of like loading frogs in a wheelbarrow ... [Our opponents have] the fat cats, but we've got the alley cats." Those darn cats again!

On April 21, 2006, New York Times writer David Carr went all Kermit on his readers when he described a teacher "who tried to get all the frogs in the wheelbarrow by training 150 children and parents to compose and perform an original piece of music."

In a blog posted, aptly, on Leap Day (February 29, 2008), commentator Sara Robinson noted, "We lose a lot of good leaders simply because they get tired of trying to keep all the frogs in the wheelbarrow."

McConnell probably got tired of this task, too, which may explain why the Republican health care plan croaked.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.