I had a yellow frog in my kitchen today. Which meant no lunch (no peace!) till it was out of the house. But frogs in the daytime are particularly drowsy and stupid. (At night it's just the opposite: they jump about like India rubber balls). And this one refused to budge.
I looked out of the window, hoping to catch someone who would catch the frog for me. And I got lucky. For a straggly group of boys was returning home from school.
Thinking it a big joke, about a dozen of them crowded into the house.
The biggest took charge. I gave him a plastic bag and stood at a safe distance. (As soon as you grab a frog it tends to squirt a liquid, and only the least squeamish will grab one with his bare hands.) He picked up a koyta (a curved axe of sorts) and tried to whack the frog into the plastic bag as if he was playing a game of hockey, the bag was the goal, and the frog the ball.
It reminded me of the game of croquet in Alice in Wonderland, where the ball is a hedgehog and the mallet a live flamingo. The frog jumped all over the place, everywhere but into the plastic bag. The boys shouted and cheered the boy on.
This went on for some time, with the koyta not even making contact with the frog. Losing patience, a little fellow pushed aside the poor hockey player and eagerly lunged forward to grab the frog with his bare hands. Holding the frog gleefully by its one leg he ran out and tossed it onto the road. Instantly the boys were after it, trying to kick it as if it was a football this time. Even I felt sorry for the poor frog. But you know what they say about little boys, and frogs and snails and puppy dog tails. I guess a little girl would have kissed the frog.
(But the truly philosophical question is: Why does a frog exist? And if it's whole raison d'etre is to catch insects and eat them so as to maintain the eco balance and all that, then shouldn't it be out there in the garden doing its froggy thing instead of slacking off in my kitchen?)
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