Body Count, part 2

You'd think, after killing the fish in very short order, that I would be scared off from ever getting another aquatic critter. After all, there's all sorts of complicated factors to worry about, like pH, water temperature, and lighting, and I tend towards the hands-off when it comes to pets.

No, not me. There's got to be another watery denizen whose lifespan won't be measured in hours once they come through the front door of my house.

Frogs. How about frogs? I had frogs as a kid, and they always worked out OK. Of course by "had" I meant they lived in the mud puddle behind my house and "worked out OK" means they lasted a couple of days before something four-legged ate them.

Back to PetsMart, which was rapidly closing in on Lowe's as an excellent place to waste (in the purest sense, ie deriving no utility whatever) money. I walked out twenty minutes later with a small (about 2") aquatic frog that the clerk assured me was plenty durable. Just condition the water like with the fish, clean the tank, and feed it on a regular schedule. No problem, I said, can do.

Into the tank he went, after the requisite scrubbing and tank preparation. The frog frolicked around, in that odd little breast stroke thing they do. "Kick like a frog, like a frog!" I heard my 5th grade PE teacher yell during swimming lessons. "So that's what he meant...oh." I am a horrible swimmer, always have been, and the fact that it took over twenty years for a simple lesson like that to sink in is testimony to my aquatic incompetence, or maybe the teacher just sucked. Probably the latter.

The next morning, as I was trying to get the coffee maker going, my daughter padded into the computer room where we keep the fish/frog/poo tank, and shrieked. Sure enough, the Grim Reaper had visited yet again. I wandered in, and there the frog lay, in the same paralyzed backflop the fish had demonstrated, only the frog had legs, and well, he was a frog.

Crap.

I distracted the rug rat long enough to scoop the frog out and give him a dignified burial. My next door neighbor is going to be pissed when he sees that frog in his front yard.

That does it, I told my wife, we're getting something four-legged.