Death of a Frog

Sep 28, 2006 in pets

Micah, the eldest toad of the New Gnostic Assembly of Amphibians, passed away late last night.  I was fortunate enough to spend the last few minutes of Micah’s life holding Micah in my hand.  Micah had been struggling all day and around midnight finally gave up the ghost. 

Micah was a great pet of about two years and survived numerous moves from the Columbia house to my classroom to a small cage during the move to the Asheville house.  The smallest and darkest of the toads, Micah nevertheless was one of the more vocal of the group and we will miss Micah’s noises.  So now we’re left with Obadiah, Melchizedek and Enoch in the Assembly, but they are always on the lookout for new recruits.

Schaefer and I buried Micah underneath a maple tree in the backyard with a toy leaf that had been with Micah since I’ve had Micah along with a few meal worms (dried out and already dead) for food on the journey to the River Styx.

I read the following Seamus Heney poem (one of my favorites) at the burial…

Death of a Naturalist


All year the flax-dam festered in the heart

Of the townland; green and heavy headed

Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.

Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.

Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles

Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.

There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,

But best of all was the warm thick slobber

Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water

In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring

I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied

Specks to range on window-sills at home,

On shelves at school, and wait and watch until

The fattening dots burst into nimble-

Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how

The daddy frog was called a bullfrog

And how he croaked and how the mammy frog

Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was

Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too

For they were yellow in the sun and brown

In rain.


Then one hot day when fields were rank

With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs

Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges

To a coarse croaking that I had not heard

Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.

Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked

On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:

The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat

Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.

I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings

Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew

That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

 

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Sam Harrelson lives in Asheville, NC and is pursuing his PhD in Religious Studies (Early Christian Origins). Sam is also an award winning blogger, speaker and online community strategist.

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