Through different social media channels, I follow a handful
of people (mostly writers) who help me do my day job. Sometimes they help me do
my 24-7 job. It probably wouldn’t hurt if I followed a few more, now that I
think about it.
Though I am 100% sure I’m never going to make a rainbow cake
(I seriously dislike cake and I have a somewhat unnatural fear of food
coloring), I love reading and seeing what the writers at Write in Color have on
their minds. Yesterday they posted this story on their facebook page, along
with this question: “What's the craziest thing you've seen lately?” Aside from
a fleeting encounter with a bumble bee, which was really only metaphorically crazy—and
probably only to me—nothing came to mind.
Then I remembered something crazy I heard over the weekend.
Our friends invited us to camp with them on their family’s
40-acre plot near their house in the country. It’s mostly wooded; but it has a nice open meadow and a fishing
pond in one corner of the property, both of which have been groomed for (rustic)
habitation.
Probably about 10 minutes before it was polite, I abandoned
our group for some deep exploration. I started at the first bend of the water’s
edge and made my way slowly around, crouching every few steps to get a closer
look at whatever I’d just scared into the water.
Step, step, plop. Step, plop.
Step, plop, plop. I wasn’t quick enough to see even one; but I did once catch a
small pair of spiny, webbed feet before they disappeared under the surface.
Frogs. They were everywhere. Like a bad sci-fi movie.
Later on, after we settled in around the fire, we started to
hear their off-key, loose-banjo-string calls. They plucked and released, back and
forth in dueling, toneless exchanges. They didn’t stop until sunup, when the cacophonous
cries of wakened birds drowned them out. The six of us city dwellers were
completely charmed. We giggled as we tried to recreate this curious sound. And
that was probably the craziest thing our hosts had heard lately.
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