Mr. Frog

Last summer, shortly after we'd moved into our new house, we noticed that a new inhabitant had also moved into our tiny pond in the front yard: a miniature brownish-green frog.

The joy that Mr. Frog, as we named him, gave us over the summer and fall months is hard to describe. We always looked for his perky little body to greet us as he sunned on the largest rock of the pond, and to jump, just as quickly, into the water.

We loved to see him, only his nose and eyes protruding out of the water, like a crocodile, while his body was suspended below the water's surface, awaiting for unaware or inattentive insects to eat.

I consulted a biology colleague who was not surprised when I told her of our new tenant. "They often hop for miles looking for their own little pond," she said. Mr. Frog must have hopped for miles, indeed, because we can't think, or know, of any body of water that's near our house.

Once the dreaded Winter came, we often checked the pond to see if we saw any evidence of Mr. Frog being in distress, and my husband mentioned that frogs will hibernate in the bottom of ponds, so we tried hard to believe that was the case. That all was well and Mr. Frog would emerge, triumphant, in the spring.

But when the pond froze solid and a blanket of snow covered it for days, I began to worry in earnest: there was no air for Mr. Frog to breathe.

Today, as we walked out of the house to run an errand, and as the ice in the pond floated on its surface, thawed by the unusually warm temperatures of the past week, there also was Mr. Frog, alive no more. Thus he becomes another one of the too-many casualties of these hateful winters we have in Ohio. Unlike, Mr. Robin, whom we helped to save, there was nothing we could do for Mr. Frog. Perhaps that's why our sorrow today is so heart-felt.

We didn't know Mr. Frog for long but he was such a source of joy and wonder for us that we are grateful for having known him.

Some losses are easily replaceable or forgettable. Others not so much. Others leave a permanent ache and a void. I will miss my grandmother's love, my Ruster Buster, and my Geni Girl for every day I have left to breathe and walk on this earth. Of course, Mr. Frog was by no means in the same category as my grandmother or my beloved, elderly satos.

But he was a sweet part of our new life here, and now he is gone. Despite the shortness of our acquaintance with Mr. Frog, he is deeply mourned and will not be forgotten.

And I guess that's some kind of immortality. And I guess that's one way he has cheated the callousness of Death, which, try as I might, I never can comprehend.