Well, the frogs are gone. All three of them. I did not evict them, they left on their own,
and I feel abandoned. After all I did, leaving the picnic cooler on its side with a lid
full of rain and algae, floating leaves on the water to make hiding places, forbidding
Otis to put his big doggie paws in the water — you’d think those frogs
would’ve hung around.What
I can’t figure out is where they went. They were too quick to get eaten by a cat. I
think. And Otis likes his homemade doggie biscuits better than he would three agile frogs.
I think.
Looking for them under the porch
and between the hostas, I realized frogs have maintained a peculiar presence in my life.
Years ago, when Himself and I
worked at the same radio station, one of the jocks kept playing a line from a comedy
record:“More frogs, Carl. Send more frogs.” It was a woman’s voice, sort of
seductive, and although you had no idea why or what, you just knew she had something kinky
in mind. Eventually, the station manager came to the same conclusion and made the jock
stop playing it.
We kept saying it around the
station anyway. “More frogs, Carl. Send more frogs.”
The correct answer to that line
was, “Ribbit.”
Then there were the frogs that got
into the swimming pool and couldn’t get out. The kids tried to give them artificial
respiration, using just their finger tips. It never worked. Boyfriends of the time made
bad jokes about frog legs for supper.
And, from my early picture-taking
days in Richfield, I have a photograph of a kid’s foot and ankle with a large frog
resting comfortably on the tied shoe string.
A family of frogs lived down in
the drain of the slate patio at the Richfield house. They became fairly tame and would
lounge around on the slate even when we walked close by.
Once Janell, my granddaughter, who
was about 3 at the time, just reached down and picked one up with her bare hands.
Then she didn’t know what to
do with it.
We fixed it a home in a shoe box
with grass and leaves, but it only lived there for about 30 seconds.
My mother was so upset she
wouldn’t let Janell near her until Janell washed her hands, and strongly suggested we
not let that happen again. We wouldn’t have stopped Janell from catching more frogs,
but the issue never came up again because they moved out of the drain right after that.
I don’t know where they went
either.
The one person who might know
where frogs go when they leave you is the reader who told me about having a kids’
wading pool fill up with frogs. When she put up a second pool, they filled that one, too.
She took frogs by the bucketful to people who wanted them. Probably she also saved a few
for a rainy day in case her others left. Fiduciary frogs.
I only had three. No spares.
I’ve cleaned up the picnic
cooler and put it away. But I’m going to set out a pan of water, just in case the
frogs decide to come home.
I’m going to put up a
sign:“More frogs, Carl. Send more frogs.” |
Sara Pitzer