REFERENDUM WITH FROG

As this morning we were returning from our walk, Ms. M, coming down mountain in her car, stopped to chat about the recent referendum on dissolving the town council, as referred to herein a few days ago (update on that: our side lost; the town council will not be dissolved; plans for the spanking new 24/365 gas plasma incinerator in the forest above the Lake will now go forward to meet our next phalanx; also, our township of Shiga-cho will be merged with and become Otsu-cho next year, so that the "hantai" voters hereabouts will have a new town council anyway, with higher taxes and much less influence).

As we chatted on the roadside about such faits acompli, I noticed a bright green frog on Ms. M's car roof. The roof was beginning to heat up in the strengthening sunlight, and you know that story about the boiling frog; also I was thinking that if the frog waits and at last jumps while the car's doing sixty, it's crow breakfast. Since we were stopped beside a rice paddy, while Echo carried on the conversation I tickled the frog in the rice-paddy direction along the hot roof, but since it was cooler where he was than wherever he went, he didn't like to move. He preferred to stand still and broil slowly.

The conversation was winding down, so I tried to grab him; he leaped a big one, then, but into a roadside culvert; so, now that I was committed to this green enterprise I had to bend down and get him out of there, which wasn't easy, since he was hopping freely now. But at last I caught him and set him well-aimed on the paddy verge, where he paused as if to assert and savor his own sovereignty; then he leaped, landed in the cool, bright water and frog-kicked away into its vastness with glee enough for both of us. No referendum ever felt better.