Leaping Frogs!

I will praise your name, O Lord, for it is good. For you have rescued me from every trouble, and my eye has seen the ruin of my foe.” Psalm 54

Last week I heard a frog croaking, which in itself isn’t all that unusual. We have many cute little green frogs playing around the house out in the backyard. When I’m mowing, I take special care to watch for them as they strive to flee the noisy grass lopper. Just as people fleeing Godzilla or other monsters in the movies, they tend to run or hop the same direction in which I’m going, when they could just as easily hop left or right for a few froggy paces and be out of danger. But, Oh no; they’ve got to do it their way. So I, with eagle eye, keep watch as I walk and mow, and adjust my pace or direction of travel. The grass-lines are more erratic when I do that, of course, but then I remember that the outdoors is their domain. I am but a caretaker and should not fault frogs, snakes, slugs, or lizards for living life on their own terms.

Anyway, I heard a frog singing out in the night, but he or she wasn’t outside. It was calling from inside the house! Before you get the idea I’m going all Stephen King on you, rest assured it wasn’t actually calling from inside the house, nor did it have a homicidal intent (as best I could tell). It was calling from the garage, so I decided to put my frog-hunting skills to the test. I figured it should be pretty easy, for I was a major frog-hunter back in the day. My siblings, cousins, and I would wander ‘round the docks at Lake Cavanaugh where my grandparents had a summer place, and I prided myself on my ability to sneak up on frogs or toads as they sat on pads, logs, or mudflats doing their own hunting (for flies and mosquitos, I presume), and capture them before they even had a chance to elude my wiley clutches.

I always let them go after a minute or so, of course, because frogs and toads aren’t much for conversation. They sit in your hand, blink and, frankly, look pretty bored, so I would relax my grip and when they were good and ready, they’d shift in the palm of my hand, survey the lake, take a lazy hop back into the water and swim away like the creature from the black lagoon.

So, I brought back to the fore my hunting skills as I entered the garage for this battle of wits – this Great Frog Hunt. I wasn’t really hunting the frog to do anything harmful, by the way. Our frogs here are so tiny and inoffensive that a meal of frog’s legs would require about a thousand just to barely serve as an appetizer and, honestly, I haven’t got the time or inclination to provide all those frogs with wheelchairs if I were to do such a thing with them. No, my only interest in the frog in the garage was to find it, rescue it, and return it to the great outdoors from whence it sprang.

Well, that frog apparently has better hearing than I do; it was able to elude not only my clutches, but also my seeing it. Davy Crocket I’m not (apparently). That’s OK. 

That tiny creature with the big mouth has patiently eluded my efforts for weeks, now. It had neither asked for nor expected my intervention, and has been happy to sing me to sleep nightly since it moved in. The beastie simply keeps its trap shut until I tire of the chase, and when I return to my couch, Mr. Toad cheerfully sings its version of the Hallelujah Chorus.

I suspect that if Dear Frog knows the psalms, the one it prays each night is this: “I will praise your name, O Lord, for it is good. For you have rescued me from every trouble, and my eye has seen the ruin of my foe.”

That’s all this ruined foe has to say on that from here in this, our valley. He sure toad me off!

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of newly released: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book)