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frog story, part 3

I’m not sure from where I learned it, but as a kid, I believed that all living things – people, animals, plants – had souls. That was until about the still-tender-and-impressionable age of 9 when a playmate said matter-of-factly that plants and animals didn’t have souls. Only humans did. We were not really having philosophical talks like it was our damn business back then. My playmate was just reacting to something I said about our dog’s soul ascending to heaven 3 days after its death, much like Jesus’ soul did. That’s all there was to it; and not too long after we were “cooking” in our make-believe kitchen again like it was our damn business.

***

After an uneventful yet exhausting day out, I reached home at around 9 and was dead-set on retiring for the night.

I had changed into my sleep clothes. I was ready to crash. But before I could, I had to clean up my room first. I was going to do just that when, as I turned toward the hamper to dump my day clothes, I saw a frog sitting up still right beside it. A frog, oh yes. Oh no, I kid you not. It’s like a clone of the one I saw – and accidentally crushed to death – three nights ago.

I’d never felt a shudder surge so fast like that from between my toes through my spine up my nape all the way to my head. The weakening of my knees the morning I found out about the dead frog? It weakened, in effect, in comparison to what I felt this time around. That “weakening,” it was primarily out of disgust, then remorse. Disgust at the appearance of the frog. And then when it all began to sink in, remorse for the fact that I was accountable for the frog’s death.

But this. Jesus. Everything I had ever felt since my first frog for lunch to my first (and better be last) road kill of a frog added up to the worst feeling I’d had in two weeks. Distaste, disgust, remorse, shock, scare, fright. Name it. It’s there.

I got out of my room stunned witless and puzzled over how the frog could have gotten in. But more than that, I was panicking over how I should get it out real quick. So, I called my brother for help. He went inside my room to take a look and came out trembling exaggeratedly as if to ridicule me. He said he was scared to touch it, and then walked away while doing that stupid shoulder shake of his.

It was really a perfect time to ponder upon things that had happened recently. I mean, really. I looked for “un-boredom” and thought eating frogs could help. Well, I got some of that and more of something else. I thought I was brave enough to stomach frogs. Well, it was true but only up to some point. And now Kermitclan was out to take revenge, laugh the last laugh, leap the last leap.

Could anyone blame me if it crossed my mind –although in jest – that maybe it was the frog’s ghost haunting me? It’d been 3 days after all. Oh, you know, maybe it just wanted to say goodbye first before it was due upstairs. Thought it should thank me for expediting its meeting with its creator.

Who knows.

After a few minutes my brother returned with a friend of his whom I shall call FrogMasta. Armed with a yellow latex glove, he scooped the frog up and put it inside an Adidas shoebox. I didn’t ask where he threw it afterward. I didn’t need to know.

Ze End.

posted by: Giuli812 at 00:11 | link | comments |

frog story 2

One night as I was taking Zecar to the garage, I saw a frog right in the middle of the road, about 13 meters ahead, getting closer as I rolled on at 10 kph. This was about a week or so after my virginal frog-dining experience. Now this frog, it was huge and had a dark brown-reddish, rusty color. A toad, really. If I hadn't known what a frog looked like, I would've probably mistaken it for, I don’t know, a piece of rock chipped off of Mount Uluru? But then I knew better; and it leapt toward the side of the road, somewhat validating my assumption that it was at least something closely resembling a leaping amphibian.

Now I don’t take even the slightest twisted sense of pleasure in running animals over, as seemingly contemptible as some of them might be. In fact I have never killed a single cockroach on the road. I have been pretty good at steering the wheel around to avoid potential road kills. Then there’s always the horn. But this particular road doesn’t have much room for me to maneuver around in case of trouble. And I’ve never heard of frogs reacting to the most frantic of honking that they’d just as frantically leap away for their lives when in danger of being run over. So when this frog hopped off safely to the side, off I drove worry-free toward the garage.

The next morning, as I was on my way out and about, I saw a bunch of kids gathered around, all of them looking down in one direction. One kid looked up and, upon seeing Zecar getting nearer to them, motioned his friends out of the way. And thereby was revealed, the object of their attention: a frog. Oh look, it’s just like the one I saw the night before, only this one’s not moving. It’s a dead frog. A strikingly pressed-flat dead frog.

What are the odds? Could the poor frog have decided to leap back toward the road just as I passed its way and instead caught itself in between my hot tire and the cold asphalt?

Damn precise timing. So much for my wheel-steering talent. I felt my knees literally weaken as I watched the kids in my rearview mirror gather back around the lifeless frog.

 

posted by: Giuli812 at 13:34 | link | comments (4) |

frog story, part 1

I have not been able to fulfill my dishwashing duties at home. That is not good. It is bad enough that I don’t have any professional dishwashing stints that I could put down on my résumé’s “work experience” section; certainly, not being able to practice even at home isn’t going to help at all, if I want to land the first rung of that proverbial ladder to chefdom. As they say, Practice Makes Perfect, and all that banana.

A little explanation is in order. And explain I would. Suffice to say, I have been busy like a bee these past several weeks. That’s that.

The few times –and very few indeed– that I was not occupied though, I would be inside Zecar (Zecar is what I call the car that I usually drive but is not mine) wallowing in self-pity and/or driving around looking for someplace to dine in (after starving myself for a day and some hours, that is). One time that I was doing both, I decided to try something that I had never eaten before. So I went to this small restaurant that advertised itself “home of exotic cuisine”. 

It was not as “exotic” as advertised, however. Disappointingly so. I had been expecting cobras and crickets and crocs or some such crawly creatures, but no, they didn’t have any of those, no sir. Let’s see… I had had goat and carabao (water buffalo) meat before… Among the items on the short menu (half of which were not exactly as exotic as being extreme as they were merely regional specialties, i.e.: Vigan bagnet – specially-deep-fried pork) the only thing I had not tried before was frogs. So I settled with frogs. And between frog adobo (frog stewed in soy sauce and vinegar with garlic, black pepper and bay leaf – this version had onions in it) and fried frog, I thought the former promised a wee bit more adventure than the latter, so I ordered adobo.  

After about 15 minutes, my lunch arrived.



Now I just wanted to put some excitement to my otherwise bored palate; I wasn’t really looking for a lab experiment or some bloody Biology class action. So you could imagine my relief at the sight of my frogs dismembered beyond recognition. I didn’t need to see them in one piece. That said, I had full confidence that the waiter would serve me just what I had ordered.

“Tastes just like chicken.” The waiter seemed to want to reassure me. I didn’t need that either. If I had wanted chicken I wouldn’t have come here.

In an attempt to be friendly, I told him that it was my first time to eat frogs and went on to take my camera out and snapped a picture of the plateful. He had this stupid smile plastered all over his face as he watched me, and commented that frogs indeed were not for the faint of stomach.

I thought that as long as I refrained from conjuring up images of live and leaping frogs in my head as I dug in with my fork, I’d be done and over with these limbs before I knew it.

No, it did not taste like chicken. Its flesh probably had the same texture as chicken’s, but the frog had a flavor which I could not associate with anything else’s. It had a... primordial, musty taste to it; probably tasted like moss, if I’d ever had some. Then again maybe I was just confused, what with all the different things going on in that plate. Freshness was questionable, too. I began to think that I should’ve ordered the fried ones first, to experience the frog at its most (bearable) essential. Just rubbed with salt and maybe pepper and deep-fried in vegetable oil. I could’ve easily picked the frog flavor apart from everything else and said for sure that the frog did taste like fried moss.

Anyway, I was not able to finish the entire plate. I tried. I swear I did. The waiter was there watching me (I was the lone customer at the time and was dining alfresco) all the while shooing the flies that seemed to be rejoicing the death of their predators which in turn had been my lunch. I thought I’d do him service, the waiter, by eating everything on my plate. I failed. I had been doing a pretty good job of shutting out images of them frogs but I guess those very same flies were the ones that finally put me off and made my stomach turn.  Just point some arrows at the right places and we’re a food chain illustration at its rawest. Not fun.

posted by: Giuli812 at 03:00 | link | comments (3) |