A frog prince?

The first thing you need to understand before reading the rest of this entry is that I love frogs just as much as I love cows. As a young girl, I used to spend my summers catching frogs and keeping them in containers on my dresser. I'm not sure how this adoration developed, but I believe it was innate. Maybe I was a frog in a previous life – the possibility would help explain my love of being in the water as well.

So, anyway, I love frogs.

Well, last night I brought some empty jars down to the little cellar room where I store them between uses. As I opened the door, I saw that the floor was wet, as sometimes happens after a heavy rain. Who'd have thought there'd be water in our basement in the middle of February!

Most of the water had already dried, leaving a white line to indicate the high water mark. There was some water left, though, under a pail sitting in the corner. I moved the pail so that area would dry and was about to go for my bucket of bi-carb (the one I keep in the house for drying up and deodorizing basement puddles; it also works wonders in the washing machine).

As I turned, I noticed a little lump in the puddle where the bucket had been. I bent closer to look (which, at this point in my pregnancy, is becoming a little difficult). The little brown lump was a frog! At first I thought it was dead, but then it moved. How on earth do we have a living frog in our basement in mid-February? Where did it come from? Does that mean there's a crack in our basement wall big enough for a frog to wash in through?

[Western Chorus Frog — from my photo collection]

And what am I supposed to do with this frog? I can't put it outside. I can't kill it. So now I have a frog in a bucket. The irony of finding a live frog on Valentine's Day only hit me as I scooped the little guy into the bucket. Who knows, maybe he's a prince!

Happy belated Valentine's Day!