2004-08-06 11:11 p.m. I asked Jenny if she knew why our living room was full of frogs. "A plague, I guess," she said and went back to surfing on her laptop. "But seriously," I said, "what with the universe being a cold and lonely place, there being no god, Mother Nature being a cute personification of a life force that cares nothing for our happiness, let alone about such abstracts as justice and punishment... it can't be a plague. So what's the deal?" And she just shrugged like this happened every day and let one hop on her keyboard and then off again. It must have been a really good website. I should say at this point that we do not live in Queensland, Australia. These were not cane toads. I know because I stepped on one upon entering the apartment and it squirted some inner-frog-organ-lubricant up into my face and it was not so poisonous that it felt like getting hit in the face with a bat. Instead, it felt gross. It tasted awful. "We don't have enough bugs to feed this many frogs," I said. Somehow, hospitality was next on my mind. "Maybe they'll leave then," Jenny said. "Or maybe they'll die where they stand and then melt." "You can clean them up then," she said with the assured sound of someone who knows... who knows... that I would crack first. We would try to ignore the pooling of the dead frogs, the buzzing of the flies, the slipperiness of the carpet. Because whoever can't take the mess, the stench-- whoever cracks first is gonna clean it up. And it was always me. One of these days I was going to discover a mess that I was immune to. And on that day-- oh yes, my brothers-- on that day she would clean up. But these frogs were not going to do the trick. A pack of wolves. A pride of lions. A murder of crows. A plague of frogs? Maybe the website she was on was Google. Maybe she was just stating a fact. I never found out. I never went back there. She sends me email. She says the frogs are still there. She says if I come back, she has some ideas about getting rid of them. I seriously do mean to get around to answering those emails. They come every day or so. Some are sent in mid-sentence. Frogs leaping on the enter key. |
1. today is nice 3. happy yesterdays 8. thanks for hosting 4. doing other things |
(Proof that I am the only one reading.) |