Frog!

Or the thing that goes flop in the night

I’ve had to recount or summarise this story so many times over the years that it seems easier to write it down and let people read it instead. It’s been a while since the original frog farce, but I managed to find some of my increasingly hysterical tweets from that night to aid my memory (a selection included here).

Once upon a time… (No. Just no. Let’s start again.)

It first happened on a July night a few years ago while I was staying at my childhood home. I was quite tired, having worked late (the joys of remote work on zero-hour contract), and was watching some science fiction series to unwind before getting some sleep. The back door was still open to let cool night air in, the room dim with only the TV on and the light of the pale Finnish summer night seeping through the windows and the open door. I was trying to swat an annoying mosquito when I heard a little sound I couldn’t quite place. I got up from the sofa and went to the door to investigate.

Something jumped up on the floor, making me jump, too.

With feet back on the ground and heart more or less resettled in its rightful place I found myself looking at a frog on the living room floor. After mutual enstartlement it seemed far cooler than I felt, sitting still in buddha-like calm contemplation as frogs are wont to do.

So a frog had accidentally strayed in and needed to be guided back to the garden. Fine. I stepped in front of the animal thinking it would turn and hop towards the fresh air. The frog did move as I got closer, but it leapt sideways, away from the door.

I don’t know why I thought frogs would only hop in the direction their face is pointed at, but this was clearly not the case. Mystified, I shifted and tried again. The frog leapt sideways. I stared at the creature that was again sitting very still and thought, ok then, I’ll scoop it up and carry it out. The frog was having none of it, though. It performed another quantum leap deeper into the room and disappeared under the smaller sofa.

Right. Time-out. Perhaps the frog will hop back out if left alone. Meanwhile I could consider my options and do what you do in this kind of situation, which is to tweet about it. Twitter has always been a great source for providing sympathy, encouragement and helpful advice, after all.

Twitter certainly reacted quickly. I got several replies asking if I’d tried kiss the frog.

I know, I can’t believe these people. Why would I exchange a perfectly nice amphibian for some high-maintenance human prince? What use is a prince, they don’t even eat flies – or mosquitoes – as far as I know. It would make far more sense to turn all the royalty in the world into frogs.

Meanwhile the frog still hadn’t budged. I don’t have anything against frogs, they are very fine creatures, but they probably don’t fare very well indoors. But how to get it out from under the sofa? All I could think of was to get a flashlight to see where it was and a flyswatter to nudge it. Armed like this I got down on the floor to peer under the sofa and gently prodded the frog with the flyswatter. The frog promptly crawled out from under the sofa, hopped towards the bigger sofa and crawled under it.

Ok, to the other sofa. Find the frog with the flashlight, prod. The frog got out and hopped under the first sofa.

Well, at least that sofa is in the middle of the room, not in the corner, and closer to the door. So if I just make sure the frog gets out from that side…

It did. Unfortunately it had no intention of getting out of the door. Instead, it hopped to the other end of the living room.

The sound  of the leaping frog on laminate flooring was peculiar. It was a slightly hollow flop which I heard receding as the creature crossed the floor to the opposite direction, in ever quieter flops. I remember resting my cheek wearily on the floor with a flashlight and flyswatter in my hand and thinking, now that’s special. It would also be quite funny if I weren’t so horribly tired.

I got up from the floor and went looking for the frog. Couldn’t find it anywhere now. I regrouped as well as a solitary person with no frog-herding  experience can and returned to Twitter to see if anyone had provided useful feedback. Fat chance, my tweeps were just chattering and waiting for my next update. I suspect some of them actually did make popcorn.

It was now so late it was getting early in the morning and I considered just leaving a bowl of water on the floor and going to bed. Perhaps the frog would be more eager to leave after a night spent in the house. (Leaving the back door open while everyone was asleep was no option as I didn’t trust the frog to guard the house.) 

This is when one of my friends tweeted a little story about the time when, unbeknownst to her, her cats had brought a frog indoors and into the bedroom and she’d woken up when it leapt on her face (the frog, not the bedroom). Right. Right. That was it, the frog had to go.

You might reasonably ask why a frog would jump on a fairly high bed (unless it were indeed some overprivileged asshole of a prince), especially unaided by cats (which we didn’t have), not to mention that there are bedroom doors to close (I’d even had enough sense to close all interior doors earlier) that would surely keep even the most dedicated frog burglars away. It’s fair to say I was so tired I wasn’t thinking straight .

My memory of the night is also getting a bit fuzzy at this point. I believe the frog eventually reappeared and, presumably fed up with constant persecution, hopped out of the door. At least I thought so. I closed the back door, went to brush my teeth and was getting ready to crawl into bed when, once again, I heard a telltale flop.

Another, shorter round of Hunt the Frog began. I saw the frog, I lost it again and finally decided I really didn’t care, I needed some sleep and the poor frog probably needed a break as well. I filled some kind of dish with water and placed it on the floor, closed the doors and collapsed on my bed.

After a night’s  morning’s sleep I conducted a thorough search in daylight. No frog. Mom had opened the back door long before I’d got up so perhaps the frog had grabbed the chance to get out. Good.

The next night I worked fairly late again as I’d lost quite a few hours sleeping in after the frog hunt. I stopped a bit earlier this time and watched some sci-fi when…

Flop.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

At least this time the hunt was shorter, I managed to guide the frog out and closed the back door. But this didn’t seem entirely accidental anymore. My family has lived in the house for decades, there have always been frogs around, but never before had any of them got in the house. I still don’t know why they suddenly decided to explore the great indoors, but after the second visit I blocked the door with a suitable polystyrene panel when airing the house late at night. The next July I basically relived the frog farce all over again. Other Julys or Augusts since had minor amphibian incidents until we learnt to anticipate the need for the frog barrier.

I’ve learnt some other things, too. The last time a frog got in I figured out that since the animal tends to sit still for a long time if not disturbed but would leap any which way if I tried to catch it, the best option was to get some kind of a cloth, throw it on the frog so it couldn’t see me and quickly scoop it up and carry it outside as a furiously fidgeting bundle. When I let the frog out it hopped into bushes looking royally (?) pissed off but otherwise unharmed.

Most of all I’ve gained a rare ability to recognise the sound of a frog on a laminate floor in a nanosecond.

I should add that mom and my nephew, who stayed at the house for a while at the time of the first incident, slept happily through the hours I spent crawling on the floor with a flyswatter. They listened to my story in perplexed amusement, but didn’t seem to take the need for a frog barrier too seriously. At least until one morning when I was back at my place in Turku and received a text message from mom. She said she’d woken up and tried to put on her slippers and wondered what was wrong with them. You guessed it, there was a frog in the slipper.

Confusing, I know. Which fairytale is it, anyway?

*** EPILOGUE ***

The Frogscapade will probably haunt me for ever. Even if the frogs stayed away my friends still keep sending me all kinds of frog postcards. (I really should try to find all of them and create a gallery here.) 

It doesn’t look like the days of the frog burglars are over, though. It was just a couple of weeks ago I last found a frog on the doorstep behind the frog barrier. It had clearly taken a bath in one of the water bowls I’d placed outside for birds and critters during the weeks of drought. After a good soak it came to the door and pushed against the barrier. It wasn’t particularly hot or cold outside, I’d imagine it was fine in frog terms. So why? Was it there to say ”Ok, I’ve been to the spa, now where’s the karaoke?” What does it need? Does it like sci-fi? Should I build a little house for it with a small sofa and my old smartphone connected to Netflix?

Answers on a postcard.