Letter: The Frog Who Became King

The box labeled “Live Animals” was open. 

Whoever – and whatever – had been in there was gone, which was a scary thought. 

Giant green anaconda? Titanoboa cerrejonensis? Vasuki Indicus?

Was a slithering, suffocating, snaking, long, limbless reptile with no eyelids and mere slits for eyes watching them from somewhere nearby?

Or slumbering? 

Or silently approaching?

With no little amount of trepidation, and with a rather large sense of dread, she gingerly reached out and slowly lowered a flap, leaned forward, and peered over the edge.

It wasn’t empty. 

A pair of eyes, certainly not slits but rather big and bulbous, peered back from the bottom.

He looked harmless enough, seemingly happy to see someone smiling down at him, and in the briefest of moments and without noticeable effort he hopped – he was a frog after all – to the top of the box and looked about at his new surroundings.

She decided they couldn’t really leave him, that if there were a slithering snake nearby the frog might soon become prey, so despite protestations by a disapproving husband, she quickly placed the frog in her tote, grabbed her husband’s hand, and led the way, the husband dutifully following and not without a fearful glance back over his shoulder.

“What shall we name him?” she asked, as she swung the frog along to-and-fro in the tote.

Without waiting for his response, she offered “How about ‘St. Thomas’?”

They’d returned recently from a cruise to the Caribbean, St. Thomas in particular, where she’d purchased some souvenirs, including the tote from which the frog now gazed happily about. 

The husband – still disgruntled with this whole prospect of having to care for a frog – looked at its big, bulbous eyes and just as big ridiculous red lips and countered with “Sam. Let’s name it Sam. Because Thomas spelled backwards starts with sam. And adopting this frog is as backwards an idea if I ever heard of one!”

And so, Sam, it was.

Postscript – “qui fuit rana nunc est rex” translated is “The man who was once a frog is now a king”. Some scholars suggest that the fairytale “The Frog Prince” may originate from this phrase in Roman times.

But maybe it’s not a fairytale. 

Maybe Sam does become a king. 

Because someone cared.