A Drive By Frogging

Yankee women are tough, according to one of my dear friends from the frozen intrepid north.

“We women of New England can give birth on an iceberg, swim back to the mainland across the North Sea, while carrying our newborns in our teeth—naked.”

“The mother is naked or the baby’s naked?”

“Both.”

New England women are tough. Right up until they come to semi-tropical Florida, that is. Give me one Yankee woman from Connecticut for a weekend, and I’ll show you a former Navy Lieutenant rolling around in someone’s St. Augustine grass shrieking “Is it on me? Is it on me?”

Two words. Tree frogs.

Tree frogs are sucker footed, car hopping, slime flinging, gooey-tongued attack animals. They are notorious stowaways and lurkers. It’s common knowledge here in the semi-tropics.

Tree frogs lurk in car doors and automobile air conditioning vents; they cling to windshield wiper blades and plot ways to leap through car windows so they can plaster themselves to northerners—also everybody else. Tree frogs are not Florida’s greatest ambassadors of good will, in my opinion.

“Let’s head over to the beach and experience the glory of a Florida horizon line,” I said to my Yankee friend, anxious that she had a positive semi-tropical visit. She’d already excreted enough sweat to fill a kid’s wading pool in the 150% humidity.

She was game—also gamey.

My son, Adam, decided to go along for the ride.

When Adam jumped into the backseat of the Grand Am, a tree frog followed. It jumped into the car in an elegant curving arc of slimy tree frog goop, landing with a plop on Adam’s leg. It’s little sucker feet attaching with efficient amphibian sucking action.

Let me be clear.

Adam jumped into the car. The frog jumped in. Adam jumped out—screaming. The tree frog stayed in—clinging wetly.

Panic spread like mildew. My friend was out of that car and sprinting for Maine before you could say “Kermit.”

I tried to appeal to my friend’s Puritan heritage and “can-do” Yankee spirit. 

“It’s just a little tree frog. The whole thing could fit on a nickel.” She continued to panic.  “You’re too big to swallow. Come back. What’s a little frog toe glue?”

I watched as she stopped, dropped, and rolled her way across a neatly manicured lawn in suburbia. Just in case, the attack frog had secreted itself about her person, I suppose. Adam shuddered and brushed at imaginary suction cup glue on his leg.

My head started to hurt from excessive snorting, howling, and guffawing—all glazed over with a dash of nasal drip.

I kept right on laughing until out of the corner of my sharply trained eye, I caught sight of the tree frog making another grand leap. It jumped over my car seat like a thoroughbred riding to the hounds and landed on my right anklebone. There was a wet sound when it hit and sucked on.

I was out of that car and screaming, “Find it. Find it. Find it,” before you could say sucker feet.

There in a quiet Florida cul de sac, two middle-aged women stood weeping and shuddering. We yelled—okay—I yelled at Adam to begin a perimeter search. My formerly intrepid friend didn’t yell. She just faded away into “no-can-do” whimpering.

“Adam, you have to find it, or I will not hesitate to wreck this car should it jump on me while I’m busy exceeding the speed limit.”

“No-can-do, Mom, I’m still in recovery.”

We looked toward the car. Nothing moved. We looked at each other—no one moved. Time passed. Still nothing. 

Without warning or explanation, the nickel sized tree frog jumped out and disappeared into the green, green grass of home. We had been the victims of a drive by frogging . . .

. . . and survived—not gracefully, or well, or even with our self respect in tact—but we had survived.

Bring on the icebergs.

Linda (Two Words) Zern

       

  

   

   

  

Word Rabies

“I knew foxes are quite often rabid, so I knew he was up to no good.”

This is a direct quote.

It is a direct quote from a North Carolina woman who woke up to find a rabid fox attacking her foot. She was in bed, her own—sleeping, at night, inside her house. The house had walls, windows, doors, and a roof. It was not a tree house or mud hut. She was not lost in the black forest. 

This is a direct quote, which I believe to be a shining example of an understatement.

“Up to no good.” Are you kidding? The fox was gnawing on her foot. It had managed to tunnel, smash, jimmy, or squeeze its way into this woman’s home, climb onto her bed, locate her vulnerable naked foot flesh, and zero in on its toe target—all why being infected with a hideous, fatal disease. How? Why? What the **hell?

“Up to no good.”  You mean the way Darth Vader was “up to no good?”

I love words, and as a writer, I am constantly fascinated with styles and methods of word usage via various forms of communication. How much is too much? How much is not enough? And how much is just plain kooky talk? Here’s a look at various forms of communication as it relates to rabid fox attacks, an important topic for the New Year, certainly.

An understatement is (according to the big book of word meanings) an intentional lack of emphasis in expression. For example:  I knew foxes are quite often rabid, so I knew he was up to no good. Duh!

Or,

That fox was like having a pack of teething toddlers chewing their way through my toe bits. This statement being an example of hyperbole, which is an exaggeration or extravagant statement, which differs from an exaggeration—somehow, but I’m still a little shaky on exactly how it differs.

The word exaggerate comes from a Latin word meaning to “pile up” or “heap.”  For example: There was a dumpster full of foxes heaped up in my bed—draining blood out of my body through my foot.

A question is an expression of inquiry that invites or calls for a reply. Is that a rabid fox attacking my foot? Honey, where’s the club?

An exclamation is an abrupt, forceful utterance; an outcry. Holy . . . mother . . . puss bucket! Smack it again! Harder!

The popular exclamation is often followed by or capped off with a declaration (An unsworn statement of facts that is admissible as evidence.) I found it, the clause in the insurance policy that covers rabid fox attacks—inside the house, under a king sized quilt. You’re covered.

Since the time this incident was first reported, I’ve taken to sleeping in my rubber garden boots and holding a crowbar in my clenched fist.

 So far, I’ve managed to avoid any ugly incidents where my husband staggers home some midnight hour from the airport, only to be welcomed with a crowbar up ‘side the head.

Whereupon I would have to declare, “But Officer, I thought my husband was a rabid fox up to no good.”

Linda (Hyperbolism Forever) Zern

** Please note: That although there are almost no situations in which I will make use of an expletive in my writing, there are a very few—one being rabid fox attacks or, possibly, pinworm infestations.   

A Thank You To Mrs. Teemant's Students From A Soldier's Mom

Remembering Aric's first homecoming and looking forward to his fourth homecoming in August 2011

Dear Mrs. Teemant and Students,

I am the mother of Staff Sergeant Aric Zern of “Baker Company” of the “1-506,” which is a combat unit out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. This is a famous combat unit that many people might recognize from the HBO miniseries A Band of Brothers.


They are presently serving in Southeast Afghanistan on the Pakistan/Afghan border. It’s a combat unit, which means that they are actively searching for and engaging “bad guys” (bomb makers, gun runners, terrorists, and drug dealers.) The soldiers go on patrol in the mountains of Afghanistan for weeks at a time.

When the soldiers are on patrol they go without clean clothes, showers, or hot food, which means that when they come back to base and find packages, like the ones you sent, it makes them feel absolutely wonderful.

Your gifts help remind them who they are fighting for, and that person is you and Afghan children like you.

Your packages let the soldiers know that they haven’t been forgotten.

As the mother of a soldier, who is far away and fighting in a very dangerous place, your gifts make me and my family feel wonderful and grateful. It helps me know that the sacrifices our combat soldiers make are all worth it, because you are the kind of Americans who don’t just think about helping others. You are the kind of Americans who actually get up and do good things for others—just like soldiers.

Thank you so much.

For security reasons SSG Zern can’t tell me very much about where he is or what he is doing, but he has shared a few things you might find interesting about Afghanistan.  There is only one major paved highway in the entire country (making mail difficult to deliver); the average life expectancy is forty-seven years old; in the four months he’s been deployed he has seen three Afghan women; many of the people are descended from Genghis Khan’s Mongolian invaders; and most of the population cannot read or write.

Finally, SSG Zern would like for you to know that of all the people in the world, who wish for peace, pray for peace, and long for peace on earth, no one desires it more completely than the American combat soldier. But until that time, please know, SSG Zern and his men will be standing guard in the night so that you and your family can sleep safely in your beds.

Thank you again.

Sincerely,

Linda L. Zern (Proud Mother of an American Soldier)