raining frogs

When I woke up this morning I decided to call State Farm to get the warranty information to get my car stereo repaired. I put the call on speaker, picked up the tv remote, and sat down on the couch while I waited on hold for Claims Team 6 to answer.

Feet on the coffee table, phone by my side, I looked down at the floor where a big dark hairball of dust and lint twitched. I stared at it for a second, wondering how this much crap had amassed under the table not even 24 hours after sweeping when it twitched again. Clearly a movement of something alive. Not dust. Not hair. But covered in both.

I hung up the phone that was still by my side playing muddled, too-quiet-to-make-out hold music, carefully put my feet back down on the floor, and leaned over to push the table in front of me out of the way.

A frog. This dust is in the shape of a frog. A frog is on my floor, in my living room, 3 stories up in the middle of Brooklyn. A real, alive for all intents and purposes, frog. It didn't really look like a frog. It had the basic shape, but appeared to just be a frog shaped dust bunny. But it had to be a frog under all that dust. It was moving.

I didn't know what to do. How to pick it up. I grabbed a magazine subscription card having long fallen out of its host and slid the hairball frog on to it. Setting the card and dust frog on the table, I carefully tried to remove the hair and dust covering the thing. It was too hard. Too knotted and tangled. But yes, under it all, there was a frog.

I got a bowl of water and dipped the living room frog-based tumbleweed into it slowly to help in sorting out the mess. I untangled its tiny body with the most delicate touch I could manage, piling the wet lint next to the bowl. The frog floated there in the shallow water, not necessarily "moving" by any means, but also not appearing to be just quite dead.

He was maybe an inch long, and one of its arms appeared to be broken, or at least missing its tiny frog hand. I'm not sure if frogs can break bones, but I'm sure frogs can be broken, and he looked like he had been through quite a lot. He must have crawled quite far to have amassed the amount of dust and hair and all that he did. Like a little frog based tumbleweed.

...


He's some sort of aquatic frog. He doesn't move much, but he's alive. I don't know if he will stay alive, or even if he's made it through while I've been writing this down. Maybe there is too much chlorine in the water. Maybe if he was still alive after crawling around in dust and hair on my living room floor he should just stay dry. I don't think I have the means to care for a frog. I have a bigger bowl, and maybe he can live in that. I guess we'll see if he makes it through the day, and then I'll figure things out from there.