Tag Archives: frog

2474. Life is not always a bed of roses

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Apparently beyond all this overgrown scrub and wasteland lies a house with a veranda. On that veranda sleeps a princess on a bed of roses. According to what I read, one kiss and the princess shall awake and the princess and the kisser shall live happily ever after.

That is why I have always brought my machete with me on every foray into the forest. One day, in hunting for the wild boar of the forest, I may come across impenetrable undergrowth. And here now seems to be such a thing. I have been hacking away at the prolific forestation for a good half hour.

There! I can see the house with a veranda. Another five minutes and I should be able to climb the steps to the bed of roses.

And here it is; the most beautiful princess asleep on a bed of roses! I bend down with puckered lips. I kiss. She wakes! She sits up! WOW! I have never seen anyone so beautiful. I am in love! I am bewitched!

Oh! But now I see the kiss has turned me into a frog. Truth is stranger than fiction. Life is never straightforward.

1863. Late winter

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It was winter – late winter – and Athol went walking. The trees were bare; the ground had mounds of rotting leaves.

Athol kicked the piles of leaves as he walked. It may have still been winter but a mellow breeze blew the loose leaves in swirls. Athol sat on a log and thought. Just before the leaves began to fall his world was a different place. He was secure in his job; secure in his family; secure in his life.

Now all had gone – no job, no family, no life. The world had changed in harmony with the season. There was no hope. He should stop pretending that things would return to normal. Things wouldn’t. He should try to move on – but how and to where?

In front of him was a broken branch. It must have snapped in a winter storm. The snapped branch looked like the head of a crocodile! Ferocious! Fearful!

Athol moved on; he couldn’t sit and mope forever. He kicked another pile of leaves. It exposed a little frog nestling itself from the winter. It was asleep. It was waiting for the warmth of spring. It would die once exposed to fierce winter elements. Athol covered the frog over with protective dead leaves.

He went on his way.