The Tree Frog Terminator

My son is a tree frog assassin, and that is putting it mildly. More like a tree frog torturer and then assassin. His body count thus far has reached one. Well, the jury is really still out on that. There is no concrete physical evidence…yet. (The Tree Frog Terminator is clever that way.) The body has yet to turn up over a month later after the frog’s mysterious escape from the cleverly constructed plastic nut container with a slot in the top twice mini-Kermit’s body size. I expect any day now to find a petrified tree frog discreetly tucked away unsuspectingly in some shoe or sandal in the house, or worse, in some cup in the cupboard.

This first and latest victim only wetted the Tree Assassin’s appetite, as he, I have now discovered, captured two more captives a few days ago and has been holding them in over 90 degree weather out on the porch. As I have said before, after the Woodland Shark and other various tall tales, I have become even more skeptical and suspicious of the veracity of Vaughn’s various tidbits and trivia, so when he came home from visiting one of our friend’s and stated he had brought home tree frogs (our friend lives in the suburbs, and to my knowledge, does not have a pond or lake or other body of water, besides his above-ground swimming pool, anywhere on his property), so I thought it was pretty safe to humor Vaughn with a few “Uh-huh”s and “That’s nice, Dear”s, throwing in a complimentary, “As long as you keep them outside.” Now, being the slacker mom that I am, I only vaguely registered the fact that this last comment made him unusually gleeful, and I briefly thought it odd that the permission to keep fictional amphibians outside would fill a 7-year-old boy with such joy. However, in my defense, there were two facts that I thought were pretty self-evident, thereby making the likelihood that Vaughn was in possession of real live tree frogs pretty impossible:

1. After the escape and subsequent, we can assume, tragic loss of Kermit the First, and the literal hours and hours of emotional fallout that ensued after Kermit the First’s disappearance, I thought, logically, “Why would Vaughn think to repeat such an occurrence so soon after having undergone such gut wrenching grief?” I mean truly it was quite the dramatic spectacle—gnashing of teeth, rending of clothing and tearing of hair. I stopped him before he got to the point of wearing sackcloth and ash.
2. His father was with him, and having experienced this emotional catastrophizing of the loss of Kermit the First, would again, logically, have enough sense to halt even an inkling of repeating that scene. (I believe I’ve mentioned in the past how I thought this whole parenting gig would be a lot easier if there were just one of us? This would be one of those instances. For the record, Kermit the First was brought home on Daddy’s watch as well.)

And so this leads us to today…I’m picking him up at his day camp class, and there is another little boy there begging his mommy to allow him to see the tree frogs Vaughn has brought to class. Now mind you, this is another one of those over 90 degree days, and the mother (in all her granola-nuttiness) turns and looks at me with nothing short of an “are-you-out-of-your-ever-loving-mind?” looks, followed by another well known mother-to-mother look: “What kind of mother are you?” A look, sadly, that is only all too familiar to me. I look back at her with what I have come to think of as my “Woodland-Shark-Attack-gullible-parent” look, shaking my head sadly that my son has duped yet another sucker. But…her son is emphatic and Vaughn is starting to make me nervous because he’s giving me the sheepish “Heh-heh-um-I-didn’t-really-mean-it” looks. It is at this point all the conversations and babblings over the past few days come rushing back to me in one of those frenetic rewinds you have in your head when you’re about to have a terrible epiphany. Vaughn is over at his backpack at this point, continuing to give me the sheepish looks, with the other little boy crouched down, his mother in tow, eagerly awaiting the tree frog unveiling. It is at this point I decide I had better intercept, the epiphany exploding full force in my brain as I look at the scene before me: Vaughn opening up a little plastic container, empty, with the exception of two little, unmoving, very real tree frogs. I give Vaughn my “Boy-you-are-in-trouble-now” looks and then glance back at the other boy’s mother in an effort to do damage control. She is now looking at me as if I were Hitler’s mother, which, well…I can only hope this stops with tree frogs. I cut my losses, scoot Vaughn out of there as quickly as possible, launching into a lengthy lecture on animal cruelty and the humane treatment of living beings, especially amphibious living beings in over 90 degree weather with no water. I then get on the phone and give his father a good tongue lashing, to which he responds, “I thought you knew about them? He said you told him to keep them outside.” “Yes…well…It’s still all your fault! How was I supposed to know they were real?!”

Anyway, I dreaded the inevitable release of these poor tortured Kermies (or rather burial), tallying in my head that this would make the body count rise to three and wondering if this qualified as torturing small animals in the Serial Killing For Dummies handbook. Nevertheless, I wanted Vaughn to be a witness to the results of his irresponsible behavior (praying he wouldn’t start laughing maniacally as the little pale green bodies plopped out one by one into the cold, cold…well, hot ground). Much to my surprise, tree frogs are evidently remarkably resilient. It was sort of like Insta-Frog. We added a little water, and *boing* *boing* they sprung to the top of the container, seemingly the none worse for wear, miraculously resurrected from their dehydrated state, and teaching Vaughn a valuable lesson (a la Crab Dog): Capture tree frogs, house them in sweltering heat with little to no water and no food for days on end, and they will thrive, enabling you to say to your mommy, “See? I’m a good animal keeper.”