Of Frogs and Geckos

I hate frogs.  Disgusting little creatures.  They and their reptilian relatives.  Yech.  Slimey little dudes made me throw up one time I was so disgusted by them.  Not everyone feels this way.  My sister-in-law actually kept a frog as a pet.  Ewwwww.  The bowl it lived in was algae green and it slurped up all sorts of things that I take the Lysol after.  But then, she had two boys, and I, of the daughter variety, tended to fluffy white dogs and self-cleaning cats.

Don’t know what this frog’s name was.  He probably had one.  The most remarkable thing about him was that he lived for nine years.  NINE.  N-I-N-E!!  What frog lives that long?  They should have named him Methuselah.

I don’t know what they fed him.  Maybe he ate algae.  Don’t care to find out.  Once some neighbors asked me to take care of their cat when they went out of town.  Sure, I said, be happy to.  Oh, and can you feed the lizard?  I guess, I replied.  I did not know that I had to take live crickets and drop them to their doom in his cage.  I dropped them and pounded up the stairs and out the door.  I did not want to watch some disgusting reptile eat a cricket.  Not that I like crickets either.

We used to live in the Hawaii where they had all sorts of insects and reptiles.  Cockroaches.  Geckos.  People made pets of the geckos because they ate the cockroaches and, well, lesser of two evils.  The geckos were about 5 or 6 inches long in Hawaii.  I didn’t mind them very much, until one time while I was taking a shower, a gecko fell off the ceiling into the tub.  The little gecko did not like landing in the water in the bottom of the tub so to escape the water ran up the inside of my bare naked leg, thus sealing the fate of any further geckos I should ever meet. 

However, after Hawaii, we moved to the Philippines, where the geckos are e-NOR-mous.  I wasn’t about to take any of them on.  But they had to be enormous, because so were the insects.  The great flapping insects there are from The Land of the Lost movie. 

We had a gecko that lived in a hole in the wall around the corner from our apartment.  We’d come home in the evening and creep around the corner for the delicious thrill of seeing this primeval fellow.  He was probably 12-18 inches long.  Hard to see the end of him, but his snout could have easily ingested a Chihuahua.

That was not the most magnificent of reptiles there.  They had monitor lizards.  These black knights in chain link armor would appear out of nowhere.  Once a group of us ladies were taking a walk and spied one right beside the road.  His inward turned feet had two inch claws, and a blue tongue the size of a pencil snaked out to smell us and assess the danger.  I watched in fascination as he scurried into the brush.  Wouldn’t have mind watching him a bit longer, but he was obviously scared.  Poor guy.  Little did he know I was too.

But back to Methuselah the Frog.  One day, the boys of the house had a friend over that did not know that Methuselah lived quite well in a slimey bowl.  He dumped the bowl and frog into the sink and cleaned out the murky mess.  Methuselah died that night.

The boys buried him in the backyard, with tears and snuffling.  They said a prayer and hoped he would go to his algae reward.  As the boys walked away, one of them turned back and looked at the spot where Methuselah lay.  “Love you!” he said.

I never think about this story without being amazed that little frogs can be loved.  Or geckos.  Or people not like us.  Or that bullying girl in eighth grade.   

It’s pretty much a miracle, love is.  Wow.