It’s funny the way we “see”. At first we did not notice it. What we noticed was a series of unusual little… pellets on top of the baseboard. Then some more on the floor by the hinge side of the kitchen door. It was only after a couple of minutes when one of us looked up high enough, that we discovered the intruder.
How long he had been there, we could only guess at as we’re not familiar with the frequency of bowel movements in frogs. But, in view of the fact that we had been away in Vancouver for a week, and the fact that there were a lot of little pellets on the floor and the baseboard, it could have been a while.
Similarly, we never did discover how it got in. It obviously snuck in. But how was it that we didn’t notice it?
Cherry said “There is a frog in the kitchen”, in a very calm and factual way.
“I know” I replied, thinking of my French background and remembering my years in school and what the kids called me.
She glared at me. “It has to go!”
“True. There isn’t enough meat on him for dinner for two.”
I grabbed a paper towel and reached for him (her?). Sorry, but frogs, especially this one that seemed to be sweating profusely, are slimy, and no longer being six, I wasn’t tempted by grabbing the beast with my bare hands.
I reached, and it launched itself at me. I just about launched myself into the lake. It missed me by a couple of inches.
Now the frog was everywhere. I slammed the sliding doors of the kitchen shut.
“Get it out of here!” Cherry said loudly. Herding a frog out of a kitchen is not as simple as one could think. Within a minute or two of chasing it around, it was clear that this was a job that required wrangling experience; which I lack.
I opened the kitchen door to the verandah. Cherry went through it. The frog didn’t.
Armed with my paper towel, I tried to shoo the amphibian towards the door. It was either dumb, or ill-willed. It just hopped somewhere else. Having been brought up on a steady diet of cartoons, I could almost hear “boing!” as it jumped from one part of the kitchen to another…
It took a while, but eventually it go through the door. And it hopped into the hose reel, from where it seemed to glare at me.
We went back in quickly, closed the door and locked it.