Friends 'n Froggies

It was 9:30pm when when I heard the phone ringing last night. A little bit on the late side which always causes you to grow a tad more concerned regarding the urgency of the call.

I picked up the phone to hear my neighbor across the street, Brittny, on the line and her daughter, Sophie, screaming in the background. Knowing her husband was gone that evening, I quickly went into the Oh my gosh -- something is majorly wrong mode.

"Brittny," I said. "What is it? What's going on?"

My friend just laughed slightly, a bit under her breath, and paused slightly before answering my question. "Wendi, you are going to laugh," she said, as Sophie opened up with another yell. "But could John come over and help us with something?"

Later, I would receive an email from her, long after John had come and gone with his help.

Here is the email:

"I don't know what i'm going to do when everyone moves and i can't call you that late and ask for someone to come remove a baby tree frog from my daughter's room. every time i went near it the thing would start to hop and sophie would F R E A K out!!!!!!!!!! making it jump even more. thanks again!"

That's right, John caught a baby frog for them! He said that when he saw the frog and Brittny told him she was unable to get it he asked her if she was unable to get it "mentally or physically."

Brittny confessed that it was probably more of the former.

This brought me back to an image from my childhood.

It was late at night, nearly bedtime for me and my younger brother. I think I was about ten at the time. Keith was eight or so.

My mom was cleaning the kitchen. Keith and I were playing in the other room.

Suddenly we heard my mother squeal. Running into the kitchen we saw her, poised over the sink, broom in hand.

"Mom! What is it?" I asked.

"It's a frog," she said. "A big one!"

She looked at me, and when she realized I would be completely useless despite my advantage in age, transferred her gaze to my brother.

He was standing there in his shorts, bare chested, and in a moment, you could see his brain process all that was going on. He was the only "man" in the house at the time. And this was a slimy creature. You could tell that while he knew the lot to catch the frog fell to him, he was not at all excited about his plight.

"You have to catch it and take it out of this house," my mom said to him as she continued to block the creature from getting out of the sink with her broom. "Right away."

Keith nodded and swallowed so deeply it was visible to both me and my mom. She transferred ownership of the broom to his hands as we two women submissively backed up, standing at least five feet behind my brother and attempting to use each other for shields.

I don't recall exactly how things transpired next, but the the next thing I knew, Keith was screaming and jumping around in circles and throwing the broom clear across the kitchen. And my mom was dragging him out of the house and swatting at him with the back of a kitchen rag she had snagged in all the excitement of the moment.

It wasn't a pretty picture seeing that frog glued to the front of my brother's chest. (Although I do recall laughing slightly, both then, and later.) It caused him to scream in a higher pitch than even a young boy should be capable of.

To this day, my brother has an incredible aversion for frogs. The picture above is one JB drew in art school. He gave my brother a copy of it one year, and I think Keith was quite offended by the gesture of goodwill bestowed upon him by my husband. His dislike of frogs is not slight. It is monumental.

Either way, I am guessing that my friend Brittny's evening with a frog will be one for the history books in her house just like it was in mine.

And I only hope that anywhere we move, I either have a fellow husband I can call on for help with life's little froggies when my husband is away ... or a son who doesn't share his Uncle Keith's aversion to the little amphibians.

Or maybe Scrubs is as good a frog catcher as he is a rabbit catcher ... yes, he brought me one of these (dead) the other day. Brought it right up to the sliding glass door, pride spread across his little doggie face.

But that's an entirely different story for a different day.