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FROG LIT

Last night after dinner, having dived under the table to catch the frog, the frog that in the froggy hoppy way kept hopping froggy just out of reach (the crafty cold-blooded creature having earlier managed to hop out of the rain and into the house when the door was held open for a moment to shake a raincoat), I was just about to grab him (most frogs I write about are male for some reason) when all at once His Greenness stopped and, forelimbs akimbo in a forthright pose, gazed earnestly upward at the towering stack of books under the table.

I stopped too, intrigued by this amphibian's sudden intellectual attitude as he virtually sought to grasp the ungraspable in all its glory, gazing much as we gaze at the stars, arrayed there before him like a cosmos of knowledge, drawn perhaps by titles that had nothing whatsoever to do with frogs, which no doubt was a first for him. Or perhaps he felt dwarfed by the multifrog size of a stack of a literature comprising other than endlessly intoned repetitions of ribbet; in any case, he froze at the grand sight, obviating the need for me to call upon my boyhood-acquired amphibian-outsmarting wiles; I captured him no problem.

He squirmed coldly and damply in my hand, seeking a way out as though eager to get on with his studies; but I, sensing that his time had not yet come, particularly in my kitchen, put the knowledge-hungry beastie outside into the damp dark where countless of his fellows were intoning repetitive but earnest ancient songs about frog life in damp darkness. The story of his adventure will likely be a source of some humor in froggy academic circles.