Of all the animals I've known--and owned--in my life, none can really compare with Froggie. Ounce for ounce, he (or, was it she?- we'll never know!) was the smartest, most fascinating little creature I've ever encountered. Go ahead; roll your eyes. Just about anyone who had the privilege of meeting him (I'll call Froggie "him" from here on) was a quick convert. This was no ordinary frog, for reasons I'll explain later.

I got Froggie by accident. I didn't beg for a frog, and then go to a pet store to get one. That wouldn't have happened. Instead, my father received an excited phone call from his friend on the sixth floor (we were on the sixteenth), who, like himself, had several fish tanks. Apparently, thrown in along with some goldfish he'd picked up earlier, was something he couldn't identify. "Jack, can you come down here and tell me what kind of fish this is?" "Sid", he informed him when he got there, "that's not a fish. That's a tadpole!" "A tadpole? A baby frog? What am I gonna do with it? You want it?"

I was ecstatic. I was one of those thirteen-year-old girls, who, unlike many others I knew, thought the "ickiest" things were the best. I liked everything that other girls would scream at the sight of. The list that went on and on included snails, slugs, spider crabs….and certainly frogs. (I attribute this attitude to my dad, who always saw the beauty in all creatures that others considered ugly.) We put the tadpole in a small tank. I watched it swim for the longest time. "I can't believe Sid thought it was a fish", said Dad, shaking his head. I couldn't believe that he didn't want it.

Shortly thereafter, the tadpole sprouted back legs. I was amazed as he kicked around the tank, still looking so fish-like, yet forever changed. He sprouted front legs; his tail started shrinking. Overnight, it seemed, his face became frog-like, with the once fish-like eyes now bulging up toward the top of his head; his mouth changed into a frog's mouth. When his tail was gone, my father drained most of the water out of the tank, and put in a couple of flat rocks for him to "sun" himself in the fluorescent light. He was now a bonafide frog. He wasn't the stereotypical green, but brown, with an aqua tint around his mouth. Much later on, my father would see a picture of a frog with his coloring. "Look", he showed it to me. "He's called a "Blue Frog".

"I'm gonna train him", I announced soon after. My father looked at me like I was even dumber than Sid. "You're gonna train a frog? You're nuts!" he laughed.

"No, I'm not", I said adamantly, "I'm gonna train him." It didn't matter that Dad didn't believe me. I probably figured that this frog and I were put together in order to both escape an ordinary existence. Or, at the very least, I wanted an extraordinary frog. Despite Dad's opinion, I was to have one.

The first thing I decided to do was to train Froggie to eat out of my hand. I'm glad I wasn't squeamish then. The thought of taking a live mealworm, (a type of beetle larvae) and holding it while it squirmed in front of "Froggie", now makes me wince. (By the way, of course there were much more original names, than "Froggie", but it seemed the most logical. He didn't need a fancy, pretentious, name.) Froggie quickly learned to snap the mealworm from between my thumb and forefinger, as it squirmed. If it didn't squirm, Froggie would sit there on his rock, disinterested, and make no move to get it. He could sense if the thing was sluggish--or dead-- and he became a spoiled frog. No pretend-twisting or turning of the mealworm could fool him, and he'd defiantly pass up dinner, rather than settle. This could be maddening at times. "Well, you spoiled him", my dad would remind me, this time correct in his assessment. I'd sigh, and choose another worm for Froggie. He'd snap it up, as if to tell me that I'd finally gotten it right.

I discovered early on that he would swim over to my upside-down hand, and put his little "hands" on my palm. At some point, he took the initiative of climbing

from there to the top (near my thumb; I held my hand in the water on an angle). He would sit there for as long as I'd keep my hand in his tank. Sometimes he'd be "lazy", happy to just hold on, bobbing up and down in the water. On one of his lazy days, I tried saying something I'd repeated whenever he'd climb up on his own: "Up, Froggie, up!" "She's nuts; she's really nuts", laughed my father. With that, Froggie climbed up. Coincidence? I did it again the next time; again he responded. My father, who came over to watch, couldn't believe it. "I'll be damned!" While he still thought I was crazy, he couldn't deny that this was a smart frog. He also pointed out that Froggie did, indeed, have ears, little disc-like ones on the sides of his head. He could hear me. He also could distinguish me from other people. One day, when I sat down in front of his tank, he looked at me from his jade-colored rock, and then pushed off his back legs to walk toward me. He pressed his frog nose against the glass. He was trying to get to me. My father was, needless to say, amazed. Needless to say, too, I was glad he witnessed this. He wasn't speechless, though: "I can't believe it! I can't believe what I'm seeing!" I looked at Froggie, still seemingly trying to figure out how to get through the invisible barrier. I now think of how fortunate I was that he didn't jump away, when I took him out of his tank and kissed him on his nose. (He didn't turn into anything, as people asked me later on when Dad or I related this; I didn't want him to.) I quickly put him back into his tank, and never took him out that way again. I learned to control my affectionate teenage impulses, for fear of having anything happen to him.

At some point, we figured that Froggie might enjoy some company other than human company (even though I sat there often, I couldn't be with him all day). Dad and I put a couple of newts in the tank. Froggie seemed, if not grateful, tolerant enough of his new inhabitants. He didn't even mind when they'd climb on his back when he was "sunning"--even when they'd climb on his head. He would let a newt sit on his head indefinitely. Froggie had boundaries, though; when they'd start stepping on his eye, there he drew the line. The newt would depress one eye or other down into his head, forcing him to blink--once, then twice--sometimes even a third time if Froggie was feeling benevolent that day. The newts never seemed to learn that doing so always resulted in their being spontaneously flung off. Froggie would make a sudden, subtle move that would throw them into the air (how he achieved this, I never quite figured out) and they'd land, with a splash, in the water.

I hate to end my story of Froggie on a sad note, so I won't. Of course, eventually he got older; I knew it wasn't looking good when he lost his enthusiasm for even the squirmiest of "worms". Eventually I couldn't get him to eat at all. I refused to look at him when one of my brothers told me he was dead; I was heartbroken. "Death is a part of life", Dad would say. He would remind me that I had three good years with Froggie. Again, he was right. I really was a lucky girl.

Here are some pictures of Froggie.