Saturday, April 14, 2012

RIP Homer. . . or . . . Marge?

Not too long ago I wrote about being wary of gifts from ex-husbands like the one mine gave to my kids, a frog hatchery kit.  Of course that was in 1994 or '95, and those frogs stayed with me through thick and thin.  Until today.  Earlier in the day one of them managed to get out of the tank, something that has not happened in years.  I noticed one of the cats looking at something like .. "e-e-e-eew-w-ww!  What's that?" all creeped out and nervous.  Realizing it was a stranded water frog, I scooped him up with my hands and plopped him back into his tank.  He immediately started to swim around while dust and cat hair swirled around him.  He was fine.  

One of the frogs .. not sure which one exactly ...

Later, after a nice Saturday afternoon nap, I went into the kitchen to feed the cats and checked on the frogs to make sure they were both still in there.  They weren't.  Uh oh!  After crawling around on all fours I located Homer (or Marge) under the kitchen table on his back and a little stiff.  Being me .. I picked him up and promptly dropped him in the tank like touching the water would immediately revive him.  Um .. no.  So then I took him to the kitchen sink and ran water on him to get the dust and cat hair off of him and tried to feel if there was any life in the sticky, slimy little guy.  Tried to locate his heart in his chest - actually flashed back to when we dissected frogs in high school .. didn't help a bit.  Nothing.  Walked around with him a bit, showed him to my son, kind of waiting for the doggone thing to start flopping around in my hands!  If only his eyes would have been closed - I wouldn't have felt like I was burying him alive while I wrapped him in his burial cloth (paper towels) and tucked him into his coffin (empty microwave popcorn box) and laid him to rest (in the trash can in the garage). 

Do you think that Homer (or Marge) knew it was time .. and was trying to go somewhere to die?  I mean, elephants do that, right?  And neither of these frogs has tried to jump out of the tank in years. So that's what I'm going with.  Homer (or Marge) knew it was time and went somewhere to die. 

Rest in peace Homer.  Or Marge.

 


3 Comments:

Stimey said...

So sorry to hear about your frog. Although when I read stories like this (or your warnings back during the original adventure) I am kind of glad that my tadpoles didn't make it to adult froghood.

Poor guy. RIP.

The Beading Gem said...

My goodness, I didn't realize frogs lived that long!

Teena in Toronto said...

Cats do that too. RIP.