The Story of How the Partner Resurrected the Frog

We live close to a bike path and there is some wetland that surrounds the area as it is slightly less elevated than "Goose Hill."  When my son was young, he would pull on his black rubber wading boots and search for minnows, tadpoles, lizards, ribbon snakes and whatever else inhabited the marshy area on the other side of the asphalt path.  During the summer months our front porch became a menagerie of terrariums and aquariums where the boy housed these small creatures.  Eventually, after days of observation, he would set them free again.  One Sunday morning, he managed to capture a few adult frogs.  He carried them around and played with them, then put them on the front porch in an empty aquarium.

The partner was watering his front yard and I was nearby conversing with him when suddenly we heard the amphibian hunter howling and running up the walkway, his rubber boots sloshing from side to side and his face stricken with a look of pure anguish.  In his hand was a frog that was completely limp and seemingly expired.  "My frog!  My frog is dead!"  He sobbed as if his heart were broken.  My partner and I looked at the poor thing with its tongue hanging outside of its mouth and its immobile limbs and figured that he had dehydrated from being out of the water too long.  After consoling its caretaker, the partner took the frog and began drizzling water over its body and opening its mouth and drizzling water over its tongue.  Still, there was no movement and we walked away.  But to our surprise, a little while later when we returned, the frog began to move a little, so the partner again drizzled water over it in the cool shade.  Eventually, the little guy came back to life and my ecstatic son raced down to the swamp lands and released it into the wild. 

The boy continued his love for amphibian hunting, but he never kept the frogs for long after the near death experience, preferring to release them after only a few minutes of observation and play.