Frogs and Friends

1 hour and 16 min remaining

I’m sitting at my friends’ house.  We’re watching an earth-based TV show. I think it’s called Life? It’s close-ups of creatures and broad sweeping landscapes.  It’s Planet Earth with a different name.

Currently it’s documenting the natural life cycle of snakes.  I’ve been working on my computer and not quite paying attention.  I hear comments from my friends like, “I’m constantly at war with my wiener!” and, “Holy shit look at THAT snake sex!” 

1 hour and 3 minutes remaining.

I open up a document to write this blog, having meant to spend a few intentional hours composing something of substance, but my workday was long and my subsequent wind-down-friend-hang slash post-work-work-session has fed me too many vodkas to coherently construct anything meaningful. 

I’ve just spent a few hours combing through footage to select the perfect beauty-shots and fun-focused-action shots from the latest commercial shoot on which I worked to appease the producers’ anxious demands.  I'm uploading the stills to send to those powers that be.  

59 minutes remaining, my Google Drive upload status bar tells me.

I suddenly hear, “What the fuck is that?!”

I look up at the screen and see a giant bullfrog’s eyes explode out through the mud that it was hiding under.  It’s mating season, the show informs us.

Apparently male bullfrogs are quite competitive and aggressively attack and dominate each other in order to win their chance at mating with a female. 

“It’s like the Fast and the Furious but with frogs!” Doug exclaims, as the camera displays low-angle-slow-motion-close-ups of frog legs whipping through the air, water fan-faring in its wake as if to punctuate the aggressor’s victory over competitor and nature.

I’ve missed some of the video in documenting this.   

Somehow, the males have not all destroyed each other and a few alphas have managed to impregnate some females.  There are tadpoles in abundance. 

A high camera angle with a wide lens accentuates the overwhelming amount of tadpoles in an oppressive display of LIFE.

The narrator states, “One male stays behind—“

Before he can finish his sentence, Doug definitively claims, “That would be me!” his arms crossed in resolute-highness. 

 “—to watch over his own and all else’s offspring,” the narrator finishes.

I perk up for the joke, “To watch over your offspring?!”

“Nevermind,” Doug concedes. 

We giggle. 

The edit shifts from stately imagery of this species-specific Father Figure to one of the blazing sun in a cloudless sky.  The narrator continues, “The sun comes out, and it shrinks the water to a sinkhole pool.  The tadpoles might be stranded.”

Whatever body of water they were inhabiting – the specifics of the locale are lost on me and my editing – are shrinking before our time-lapse-documenting eyes.

There are two separate pools of water.  One houses the millions of sperm-swimming tadpoles (why do sperm look like tadpoles, when tadpoles have already been inseminated and will grow into full frogs?!), the other abundant pool houses the guardian bullfrog.

The guardian bullfrog sits contentedly in his abundant pool, but then hops over to stand watch over the evaporating pool containing his species’ dying young. 

“Look at that Doug,” I say, continuing the joke. 

“Oh man, how do I get more water over there?” Doug plays along.  “I don’t know.  I give up.  I’m gonna get drunk.” 

The bullfrog starts to dig its legs through the mud to save its future, funneling a channel between the two water sources. 

There’s an extreme closeup of the mud squelching over and through the bullfrog’s legs, as he messily continues to flail about.

Eventually there’s a small irrigation connecting the two pools.

“They’re safe because of Doug’s balls!” Steve proclaims victoriously! 

The Planet Earth show continues.  I’ve stopped paying attention in order to write this.  Brian just left to go to Lost Bar.  Danielle is long since in bed, post our Franco’s feast.

We for a few minutes narrate the animals’ thoughts, making side jokes and what-if statements about the bar where we all work. 

13 minutes remaining.

“Giant straw-colored fruit bats inhabit the Congo, their wings nearly a meter across.”

Doug falls asleep, and Steve feels uncomfortable staying while our hosts sleep and disperse. 

I revisit the earlier paragraphs of this post, refining and regretting. 

2 minutes left to finish uploading. 

“In late October every year the fruit-bats set off across the Canopy.”

A Danielle stirs upstairs.

1 minute. 

Doug stirs as Steve whispers a sweet goodbye.

  

Less than a minute left.

I promise Doug I’ll leave soon.  He insists I’m welcome as long as I want. 

“Flocks of hundred become thousands and tens of thousands become hundreds of thousands.”

63 uploads complete.

“How they know when and where to travel is a mystery.”

I pack up my computer, never learning the mystery of fruit-bat travel habits.