Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down by Dave Barry

Author:Dave Barry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307778031
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-26T10:00:00+00:00

The Wait for the Tub Is Forever Since the Frogs Moved In

I’m wondering if any of you readers out there have noticed any suspicious behavior on the part of frogs. I ask because the ones at my house are definitely up to something.

I live in South Florida, which has a hot, moist, armpit-like climate that is very favorable for life in general. Everything down here is either already alive, or about to be. You could leave your toaster out on your lawn overnight, and by morning it would have developed legs, a tail, a mouth, tentacles, etc., and it would be prowling around looking for slower, weaker appliances to prey on.

So I am used to wildlife. I am used to the fact that, as I walk from my car to the front door—striding briskly to prevent fungus from growing on my body—I will routinely pass lizards, snakes, spiders, snails, and mutant prehistoric grasshoppers large enough for the Lone Ranger to saddle up and ride into the sunset on (“Hi-yo, Silver, AWAYYYEEEIIKES!”).

My yard has also always had plenty of frogs. Until recently, these were plump, nonaggressive frogs who just sat there, looking pensively off into the distance, thinking frog thoughts. (“How am I supposed to reproduce? I appear to lack organs!”)

But lately my yard has become infested with a whole new brand of frogs—smaller, quicker, junior-welterweight frogs that are extremely jittery, as though they spent their tadpole phase swimming around in really strong espresso. And for some reason these frogs desperately want to get inside my house. They hide in crannies on my front stoop, waiting, and when I open the front door, suddenly HOP HOP HOP HOP HOP, the stoop turns into the Oklahoma Land Rush, except that instead of hardy pioneers racing to claim homesteads, there are hordes of small, caffeine-crazed frogs bounding into my living room, moving far too fast for the human foot to stomp on.

The eerie thing is, within seconds, the invading frogs have all disappeared. Some go under the sofa, but many seem to simply vanish. I think maybe they’ve developed some kind of camouflage, so they can blend into the living-room environment by taking on the appearance of a carpet stain or (if they are really organized) a piano.

All I know is, the frogs go into my house, and they do not come out, which means that there are now, by conservative estimate, thousands of frogs hiding somewhere in my living room. This makes me nervous. I’m wondering if maybe it could be a plague.

I say this because my wife is Jewish, and each year her family comes to our house to celebrate Passover with a traditional Seder feast. I am not Jewish, but I always join in, on the theory that you should embrace as many religions as possible, because you never know. You could die and find yourself in an afterlife facing the eternal judgment of, for example, L. Ron Hubbard. So I participate in the Seder; in fact, at our house I always make the traditional matzoh balls, using an ancient Presbyterian recipe.

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