Life According to Og the Frog

by Betty G. Birney

  “Sue, let me do some research,” Mr. Brisbane says. “Maybe you don’t have to feed Og crickets.”

  “BOING????” Which is my way of saying, “I can’t believe you said that!”

  Is that his idea of being helpful?

  Then I dive down into my water dish.

  Mrs. Brisbane chuckles. “He’s very entertaining,” she says. “But I think before taking on a second classroom pet, I should have learned more about frogs and their environment.”

  Mr. Brisbane pats her hand. “But you have a good heart, Sue.”

  It’s true. My teacher has a good heart.

  I have a good heart, too . . . I think.

  For many hours that night, I think about whether I want to stay in Room 26 or go back to the swamp.

  I’m not quite sure how my heart feels about either choice.

  Late that night, long after the lights are out and the Brisbanes have gone to bed, I turn my thoughts to my favorite subject: crickets.

  I’ve never known a life without crickets before. Mrs. Brisbane says they are smelly. I think they smell fabulous!

  Mrs. Brisbane says they can be lucky. I think I’m lucky every time I catch a cricket. And I thank them for that!

  As I think about crickets so much that night, I burst into one of my favorite songs.

  Sing, all you crickets,

  For life’s short but sweet.

  Sing, all you crickets,

  You’re so good to eat!

  Sing, all you crickets,

  For your zesty flavor.

  Thank you, dear crickets,

  It’s you that I savor.

  Sing, all you crickets,

  For being a treat.

  Thank you so much for

  Your life short but sweet.

  I repeat the song several times (at least). I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when Mr. Brisbane enters the room again.

  “A singing frog?” he says as he rolls his wheelchair up to my tank. “Og, you are a creature of many talents. Your voice sounds just like a banjo, which is a fine instrument.”

  “Thanks!” I jump for joy several times. At least one human appreciates me!

  “The thing is, Sue is a little squeamish about crickets,” he explains. “And of course, you’re not.”

  “Not one bit!” I tell him. “I do my job, and they do theirs.”

  “She really wants you as a classroom pet,” he continues.

  Now, those are words I have wanted to hear, even if I’m not sure what my duties are.

  “If we could just do something about the crickets . . .” he says.

  In my experience, there isn’t much you can do about crickets . . . except eat them.

  But Mrs. Brisbane is so kind to Tabitha and Sayeh and even me! I don’t want her to be upset.

  “Maybe we can make some changes,” he says with a yawn. “So neither of you will be unhappy.” He chuckles. “Or unhoppy!”

  This is a human who speaks my language. He sounds so much like Uncle Chinwag.

  Soon, he rolls back to bed, and it’s time for me to rest as well.

  After he leaves, it’s very quiet and peaceful. There is time to think. Float. Doze. Be.

  There is also time to worry about the cricket problem.

  * * *

  The next morning, Mr. Brisbane tells his wife that he’s going to a place called Pet-O-Rama. As he wheels himself out to the car, Mrs. Brisbane watches from the window.

  Then she turns to me and says, “Fingers crossed that he finds an answer.”

  I don’t have fingers, so my webbed toes must do.

  When Bert returns, he carries a big bag.

  “Well?” Mrs. Brisbane asks.

  “Pet-O-Rama came through,” he says. “Now let’s see if Og can do his part.”

  Can I do my part? I was always hoppy to splash water on Granny Greenleaf when she started to dry out on a hot day. And didn’t I always volunteer to help the tiny tads with their leaping practice?

  “I always do my part!” I tell them.

  Bert answers with a silly “BOING.” He doesn’t sound much like a frog after all.

  Mrs. Brisbane moves my tank onto the table.

  “Here are our choices,” he says, reaching into the bag.

  Mrs. Brisbane and I stare hard as he pulls out a bright green jar. I like the color!

  “Mealworms,” he announces.

  Mrs. Brisbane gasps. “I’m not sure what they are, but they sound awful.”

  I don’t agree. A nice, wet worm can be quite refreshing on a hot day. And filling!

  “You could give him a regular wiggly worm,” Mr. Brisbane says. “But I think you would prefer these dried ones, Sue. They’re called Mighty Mealworms.”

  “Dried worms? Ewww!” I gag at the thought of eating them instead of wet and wiggly worms.

  Lucky for me, they think I just said, “BOING!”

  Bert takes out some dried-up thing and tosses it into my tank.

  I’m thinking no way, until I see Mrs. Brisbane’s face staring hard at me.

  “Oh, please, Og—like it!” she whispers.

  She did say “please,” so I give it a try. It has a crispy crunch and a tart worm flavor.

  “Not bad!” I exclaim.

  Mrs. Brisbane looks thrilled. “I think he likes it!” she exclaims.

  “Humphrey would like these, too,” Mr. Brisbane says. “The man at the pet store said so.”

  Really? Humphrey and I might actually like the same thing?

  Bert reaches in the bag again. “Now, here is something called Froggy Fish Sticks.”

  I like the sound of that!

  He opens a yellow jar and throws a tiny twig into my tank.

  Twigs aren’t usually tasty, but I see Mrs. Brisbane anxiously watching me.

  What have I got to lose?

  I grab the twig with my very long tongue and am pleasantly surprised. It’s sweeter than the Mighty Mealworms. Crunchier, too.

  “BING-BANG-BOING!” I say. “Not bad at all!”

  Mrs. Brisbane smiles at her husband. “I think he likes that one even better!”

  I do. It wasn’t the same as a nice juicy cricket, but she looks so happy, I leap up and pretend to jump for joy.

  “One more thing.” Bert reaches in the bag again. What other delights does he have in there?

  “Og will miss his crickets, so once in a while, you could give him a treat with this.” He pulls out something thin and hollow, like a straw.

  “It’s a wand that will catch a cricket in a jar and you—or one of your students—can fling the cricket into the tank without touching it,” he explains.

  A wand! A magic wand, if it can fling crickets my way.

  Mrs. Brisbane looks serious, but she nods. “I could do that once in a while. But the jar!”

  “If you bring the jar home, I’ll take care of cleaning it,” Bert says.

  “You are my hero!” I shout as I bounce around my tank.

  The Brisbanes laugh. I don’t care if they think it’s funny.

  The cricket problem is solved. I hope now that Mrs. Brisbane and I can both be hoppy.

  I guess Mr. Brisbane is, too. Because the last thing he takes out of the bag is a lovely piece of moss which he adds to my rock.

  “Thank you!” I say because Granny Greenleaf taught me to be polite.

  “You’re welcome,” he replies.

  Later that evening, I think up a song about mealworms.

  Mealworms are mighty

  And they taste all righty,

  Though not quite as yummy

  As crickets in the tummy.

  Fish sticks are dandy

  And they come in handy,

  Though without the appeal

  O
f a tasty cricket meal!

  Conflict and Confusion

  I’M FLOATING ON a log through the murky waters of the swamp. I hear the distant buzzing of bees and the gentle swaying of the cattails. The sunbeams warm my skin as I close my eyes and feel the water lapping up and down beneath me. Up and down. Up and . . .

  I open one eye and see that I’m not in the swamp at all! I’m in Mrs. Brisbane’s car, and my tank is rocking up and down, up and down. I’m on my way back to school. Back to being a classroom pet, whatever that means.

  Once my tank is in place, some of the big tads arrive and come up to say hi.

  “Did you have a fun weekend?” A.J. asks in that loud voice of his. “I spent mine at Grandma’s house. We made cookies!”

  I think cookies are a tasty treat to humans, kind of like crickets are to frogs.

  There are no crickets chirping in the classroom today. It’s a little too chilly for them.

  “Brrr! It’s cold outside, Og!” That’s Tabitha, rubbing her arms as she speaks. “Inside, too! Too cold to stay on the playground! Well, bye!”

  I’m glad Tabitha talks to me, but I wish she’d talk to the other students, too. As Granny told us, “You can’t make a friend if you won’t be a friend.”

  As she and the others head to their desks, Humphrey darts to the side of his cage near my tank and out comes a long stream of squeaks. “SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK!” he says again and again.

  “There’s no use telling me something if I can’t understand it, buddy,” I tell him.

  Do you think he stops squeaking? No, he does not.

  I don’t BOING again because it just seems to encourage him.

  Besides, it is cold in Room 26, and when the temperature falls, cold-blooded creatures like me slow down.

  The tank is near the window, and it’s getting chillier by the minute, until I am about to doze off. And when it’s cold outside, we frogs can sleep a long, long time. Maybe even months.

  But I wake up quickly when I hear loud voices yelling.

  Or maybe I’m still asleep and this is a dream. Because everything in Room 26 looks different.

  Instead of my friends sitting at tables that are neatly lined up, everything’s been moved around.

  Usually, the big tads read books, or write on paper, or listen to Mrs. Brisbane. Now they are gathered in small groups, fitting together puzzle pieces, playing games and making things with paper and glue.

  But two students are shouting at each other. They are as loud as George and his bullfrog relatives.

  Instead of saying, “RUM-RUM,” one of them is screaming, “CHEATER!!!!”

  That is Gail yelling.

  The other student shouts, “AM NOT!” right back at her.

  That is Gail’s best friend, Heidi.

  From what I hear, they might not be best friends anymore.

  Of course, my furry neighbor has to get into the act.

  “SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK!”

  One thing I learned back in the swamp is that when there’s trouble, it’s best to keep your mouth shut. Again, I quote Granny Greenleaf: “When you poke your nose into other folks’ arguments, you just might get bit!”

  Ouch!

  Mrs. Brisbane quietly takes control. “Girls, please!”

  But they don’t listen. Heidi and Gail are screaming at each other, cawing like angry crows.

  It’s as bad as the famous Battle of the Bullfrogs! I’d almost forgotten what a terrible day that was.

  The more the girls squawk, the more Humphrey squeaks. “SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK!”

  Mrs. Brisbane stands right between the girls and says, “Calm down and be quiet!” She sounds a whole lot louder this time.

  The girls stop screaming, which is a good thing, because Humphrey stops squeaking, too.

  Then Gail, who is almost always giggling, starts to cry.

  And Heidi, who is always cheery, begins to bawl.

  To me, this is a bad thing. In fact, it’s something frogs don’t do at all.

  In the swamp, if somebody’s angry, they don’t cry—they do something about it. They squawk and swoop, they strike or sting, they even do worse than that. But crying? Never!

  When Mrs. Brisbane gets them to talk, it turns out the girls had been playing a game and Gail believes that Heidi was cheating.

  Heidi is sure that she was not.

  Mrs. Brisbane reminds them that they are friends and can work things out.

  “I’m not going to be friends with a cheater.” Gail wipes her eyes.

  Heidi sniffs loudly. “I’m not going to be friends with a liar.”

  Mrs. Brisbane sends Heidi over to a chair near my tank and Humphrey’s cage and sends Gail to sit at the teacher’s desk to cool off.

  The argument makes me as sad as a lizard who just lost a tail. (Even though it will grow back, a lizard still doesn’t like losing a tail.)

  While I’m thinking about sad lizards, the recess bell rings.

  “Everybody gather up the games and supplies and put them back on the shelves,” Mrs. Brisbane tells the students. “Recess is over.”

  Ah—now I understand. The students stayed inside during recess because it’s so cold outside.

  Mrs. Brisbane takes Heidi and Gail into the hall to talk. Room 26 is a lot quieter without them! I decide to sit in the water. Time to Float. Doze. Be.

  The cold gets to me again, and I do more dozing than I expected, and I am surprised when the bell rings for recess again.

  “Can we go build a snowman?” A.J. asks.

  I can tell some of the other students like that idea, but Mrs. Brisbane says there’s not enough snow for a snowman, and it’s too cold to go outside.

  I climb onto my rock, look out the window and see feathery little flakes drifting down from the sky. I’ve never seen snow before. It looks like rain, but whiter.

  For this recess, Mrs. Brisbane divides the class into teams to play a guessing game. They stand in four lines, and she asks questions one by one. If a big tad on one team gets the question wrong, that person has to sit down.

  A.J. gets a question about giraffes right, but he misses one about flowers and has to sit down.

  Sayeh seems to know everything . . . until she misses a question about basketball.

  Tabitha answers it correctly, and she smiles when she hears me say, “BING-BANG-BOING! Keep it up!”

  It doesn’t take long to notice that Tabitha gets all the questions about sports right, and her team cheers her on.

  “Go, Tabitha!” they shout excitedly.

  She looks my way and gives me a thumbs-up. I’d like to give her one back, but it doesn’t work with webbed feet.

  Seth, who is the team captain, high-fives her, and she smiles again.

  For at least a few minutes, everybody likes Tabitha, and I can tell she likes them back.

  She’s so good, even people on the other teams cheer her on.

  In between my encouraging boings, I can hear Humphrey squeaking excitedly.

  In the end, Tabitha’s team scores way more points than any other team, and everybody cheers for her.

  It’s nice to see her look happy for a change.

  But when I glance at Gail and Heidi, they still don’t look happy.

  They look as if they’ve each just lost their best friend.

  * * *

  Once the big tads leave for the day, Room 26 is peaceful, until my nervous neighbor flings open his cage door and scurries over to my tank, squeaking like crazy and twitching his tail.

  He leans in so close, he wiggles his whiskers right in my face! Thank goodness there’s glass between us or he’d tickle me silly.

  “You know I can’t understand you, don’t you, Humphrey?” I boing extra loud.

  “Squeak-squeak-squeak!” he repeats again and again. />
  I hop a few times to seem friendly, and he finally leaves.

  My mind drifts back to the swamp. I had a lot of good friends there, especially my green froggy friends. There were some bad guys, too. But at least I understood all of them.

  I’m still thinking of my old home when Aldo comes to clean.

  When he takes a break to eat, he pulls a chair up to Humphrey’s cage, which is fine with me. Humphrey squeaks on and on.

  Even though I’m not really listening, I hear Aldo talk about his dream of going back to school and becoming a teacher.

  I don’t think I’d like to be a teacher if I had to deal with irritating classroom pets like Humphrey and George.

  A nice green frog like me would be okay, though.

  He waves a piece of paper in front of Humphrey’s cage. It doesn’t look important to me, but it has something to do with becoming a teacher. It sure seems important to Aldo.

  When he leaves for the night, I spot the paper half hidden under Humphrey’s cage.

  Aldo will be upset when he finds out it’s missing.

  For once, Humphrey and I agree on something, I guess, because later that night, Humphrey flings open his cage door.

  I’m hoping he won’t come squeak at me, and he doesn’t.

  Instead, he carefully pulls the paper out in the open and then—well, it can’t be, but I think he’s reading it!

  It’s a big piece of paper, so he has to skitter along each line and then scramble down to the next line to read every word.

  It looks a little bit strange, but I give the little guy credit for working so hard to read it.

  Maybe I should pay more attention to Mrs. Brisbane’s teaching!

  I shouldn’t be surprised by anything odd that Humphrey does anymore, but I am caught off guard when he carefully drags the paper near my tank and squeaks at me.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I ask. “I can’t even see it from here. And if you drop it in the tank, the water will ruin it.”

  Humphrey gives me a long, sad stare and returns to his cage.

  But he leaves the paper right out in the open. I’m hoping that Mrs. Brisbane will see it in the morning.

  I’m extra careful not to splash it.