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His long life and my attachment to him were equally unexpected. by Erin Wisdom
ERIN WISDOM
DISTILLED WATERS RUN DEEP
I share my home with a small albino stranger. We've been together half my life and have never spoken. Sometimes I make attempts at conversation, but he is silent. Sometimes he sings at night, but I cover my head with a pillow. Even after 11 years of coexistence, I look into his round red eyes and see no indication that he recognizes me.
Such subtle tragedy has always tinged my relationship with him. He is my pet frog, called Big Foot not because he himself is large, but because his webbed feet are large in comparison to the rest of his 3-inch-long body. Like a fish, he lives entirely in water. His home is a bowl with blue glass rocks and a red plastic boot. He is small and white like a pebble, a pat of butter, a spoonful of mashed potatoes.
We met under less-than-ideal circumstances. He was the replacement for two frogs that died one April afternoon when I was in fifth grade. My mom, cleaning their bowl while I was at a friend's house, inadvertently
ended their lives by neglecting to add the drops that distill the chlorine in tap water.
I returned home to find Big Foot — the product of a run she'd made to the Wal-Mart fish section to compensate for her mistake. Despite her good intentions, I angrily insisted I wanted nothing to do with this replacement frog. I mourned the loss of Doc and Al and for days refused to acknowledge this newcomer meant to take their place.
Eventually I did allow Big Foot into my room. But even then, our relationship was a troubled one. Distant, to say the least. Paramount in my mind is the four-year period I consider our lost years, time stolen by the girly need for pastel décor that assaulted me at 14. His red boot (a much-needed hiding place whenever the cat came looking for him) clashed with my lavender walls. Big Foot was exiled to the basement.
To this day I feel shame at the choice I made to cast him
HIS STINT IN THE BASEMEN... MADE MY FAMILY RECOGNIZE THE HARDINESS OF THIS LITTLE AMPHIBIAN, WHOSE LIFESPAN HAD ALREADY FAR EXCEEDED THAT OF ANYTHING ELSE THAT HAD EVER LIVED IN A FISH BOWL IN OUR HOUSE.
aside the moment he became inconvenient to me. Our contact during his first year away was limited to my ventures down to his dank corner every few weeks to make sure he was still alive and kicking. I would plop a few food pellets into his 'bowl' and tap at him through the glass. Always he was stoic, as if to prove he could take the dark and the strange sump pump sounds just as well as the crickets could.
Fortunately for Big Foot, his stint in the basement served as a proving ground.It made my family recognize the hardiness of this little amphibian, whose lifespan had already far exceeded that of anything else that had ever lived in a fish bowl in our house.
His impressive ability to perpetuate his existence, even
when left unattended for weeks at a time, earned him a spot on my mom's desk at work. Visitors traveled from the building's far reaches to marvel at this little white wonder. Yet despite his crowd-pleasing tendencies (he's always had that special "spark"), Big Foot wasn't the office pet for long. A scare involving a child's desire to christen his bowl with un-distilled drinking-fountain water necessitated his return home. He took up residence in the kitchen on top of the microwave, safely away from children and their ignorance of the lethal qualities of chlorine.
When I was 18, I began to see Big Foot with new eyes. Maybe it was the time we'd spent apart, or perhaps maturity I'd gained in that time. Whatever the reason,
he was no longer a nuisance. Now he was a marvel. He was my quite-possibly immortal frog, something to brag about to friends and co-workers.
More than that, he was a remnant of my childhood. He had lived through my most important growing-up years — a kicking, croaking constant when everything else was changing. With this new appreciation I brought him back into my room. And later, when I moved into my first apartment, he came with me.
Sadly, even a seemingly immortal frog cannot live forever. I dread his demise and regret that as my world has grown, his has been confined to a small glass bowl. He has become significant to me, but I have no way to communicate this to him except by making sure he never again goes weeks between feedings. Even now, as he paddles about on the shelf above my desk, I know my little Big Foot has taught me more about appreciating the small things in life than he will ever know.
08. 17.2006 JAYPLAY<sup>←</sup> 15