Today was a typical day--the girls were all running behind schedule, and neither the dog nor the husband were cooperating with my early morning rush. For at least the 5th time of the morning, the dog snatched a toy that was not intended for hound dogs--and I was still in a t-shirt and sweats with less than 30 minutes before the commute to the middle little one's elementary school. Little did I know that my morning was about take a turn for the weird and unusual.
As I was wrestling a Dora hand puppet from the mouth of the Max, Madelyn, our youngest, rushed into the room shouting, "Mommy, hurry, there's a frog in the fireplace!" As I stood there in tug of war pose with a 50 pound hound dog, I slowly began to ponder what Madelyn had just announced. A frog..in the WHAT?
As my mind began to run through the possible scenarios of exactly what Madelyn the Imaginative had seen in the fireplace, I realized that an overactive imagination was the best I could hope for! I was expecting a mouse--or perhaps a bat....and a very long morning on my end. With one last whispered, "God, please, don't let it be a bat." I retrieved the Dora toy and marched to the fire place. I looked through the glass--but, was hesitant to open the doors just in case Miss Madelyn wasn't exaggerating. I saw nothing. With a roll of my eyes and a scolding of the littlest little person, I returned to my mad dash to get Macy, the middle one, to school on time.
Again, Madelyn shouted, "Here he is! Here's the frog!!" I ran to the fireplace, and sure enough, hanging there on the wire screen of the fireplace doors was a frog--or perhaps a toad...but, nonetheless, it was an amphibian creature that did not belong in a Columbus suburb fireplace.
Some people may be horror stricken or taken aback by a frog in a sealed fireplace in October...oddly enough the implications of the situation did not really strike me....it was HOW DO I GET A FROG OUT OF THE FIREPLACE WITHOUT GETTING A FROG OUT INTO MY LIVING ROOM that was my primary concern? We have four cats, a crazed hound dog and three kids....I was seeing an absolute disaster if said amphibian escaped into the house.
A glance at the clock told me that I had 10 minutes to catch and dispose of Mr. FireFrog or Macy would be late for school. So much for changing out of the husband's sweat pants, eh? I grabbed a handy antique tin from the front of the fireplace, said a prayer, and stuck my arm through a crack in the doors and began the frog catching experience. 7 minutes later, Mr. FireFrog was set free in the front yard to terrorize another suburban fireplace--and the girls were shuttled off to school.
How? Why? I'll never really know how or why the critter made its way into my fireplace...it was just another news of the weird kind of mornings in the Thompson house.
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