My weekday mornings are pretty much a repetition everyday. I wake up at 6:20am, and after my personal hygiene, I proceed into the kitchen to get breakfast for myself, my son, and our dog Molly. The minute she hears me go into the kitchen she's right there, quietly wagging her tail as she waits for her kibble. Tuesday morning was no exception.
Even in this I have a routine. Molly's cans of dog food are in the pantry; I get a can out, get her bowl, then before opening the can I get the trash can ready so I can toss the lid and not get dog food gravy on the kitchen counter. Yes, I'm annoying that way. Our trash can is inside one of the kitchen cabinets, tucked away. It's easily pulled out and put back away. I keep the cabinet door closed so that I don't have to see the trash.
And that's when I realized what I was dealing with.
It was a frog. A 1 1/2 inch tree frog. And it was in my kitchen.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't hate frogs. They are God's creatures too. As a matter of fact, I like having them in the backyard because they eat flies and mosquitoes, which I do hate.
I just don't like having them inside my house, much less in my kitchen.
Meanwhile, as I was coming to this realization and pleading with Jesus as to why He would let this little critter into my house, Molly was getting impatient. Unlike our previous dog Tobey, who was a terrier and a hunter and would have crushed the life out of that frog in an instant, Molly is a peace loving dog who only barks at cats and other dogs, and wanted nothing more than to have her breakfast. Patient as she is, she started walking back to her room, leaving me alone with the frog. Yeah, not what I was wanting right then and there. I called her back and opened her dog food can, emptied it into her bowl, then heard a strange tap on the kitchen floor.
The froggy was a-movin'.
Froggy had hopped out of the trash scooper and was now on my kitchen floor. I know I must have called upon the Lord no less than 20 times, because I didn't want it getting away, I didn't want to kill it, and above all I didn't want it to jump on ME! Eww, I don't like them to touch me! As I stood there wondering what to do next, it hopped again, this time towards the pantry. Oh no! I most certainly did NOT want a frog in my pantry! The Lord, who by this time was probably rolling all over heaven laughing, finally had some compassion on me and redirected Froggy to the garage door. It was almost as if the little critter knew that was the way out, because it was trying to climb the door to the garage. I leaned forward, unlocked the door and threw it open. Immediately Froggy went to the side where the hinges were, and I saw it go through. I wasn't sure if it had actually jumped down or not, but it didn't appear to be on the ledge there, so I closed the door and sighed a huge sigh of relief, because now there was no longer a frog in my kitchen.
No sir, there was no frog in my kitchen. There was, however, a frog in my garage. :P
I pondered how in the world Froggy got into that cabinet. The door was closed, all the cabinet doors were closed. Then it hit me. I'd been cleaning in the front and back yards the day before, raking up dead leaves and throwing away all kinds of debris, till the garbage tank was full. The next day was garbage day, so that wasn't a problem. But one of my potted plants in the backyard had some dead fronds that I wanted to get rid of. Since they didn't fit in the garbage tank, I decided to just throw them in the kitchen trash bin which I would empty out once the garbage was taken away. I knew I'd seen tree frogs there before, so it was a pretty good guess that I brought the little critter into the house myself. Which probably made God laugh at me all the more.
And what was Froggy's fate? Well, after dropping E off at school I knew I'd have to go into the garage, since Molly's leash is in there and I always take her for a morning walk. When I drove up to the house I opened the garage door in search of the frog. This was hard, because we have a painted, textured garage floor which makes it easy for a small critter like, say, a frog, to hide on. I looked around and couldn't see anything, so I tread lightly and carefully, watching every step I took. Good thing too, because I came within THAT MUCH of stepping on it. I thought, great, now the garage door is open, it can hop out of my house and into its own habitat. Only it wasn't moving. It had gotten about halfway down the garage and stopped. It looked really strange, too. I threw a couple of pennies at it to see if it would hop away, but nothing happened. So I grabbed a broom to help it scoot out. It wasn't scooting. It wasn't moving. It wasn't breathing. Upon closer inspection, I saw Froggy's face covered in spider webbing. I guess it hopped somewhere and got tangled in it, and either suffocated or had a heart attack or something, but my morning visitor was dead. I actually felt bad for it. I didn't want it to die; I just wanted it to leave. And so it did.
And that, my friends, is my adventure for this week. I hope everyone got a good laugh.
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