The hedgehog goes to the vet

In the clementine crate in the car

First of all, she's a boy. Dr. Zumsteg showed me its little zizi. I thought that was an hedgehog outie bellybutton. 

Second, he is too little to release back into nature, and he is sick. For the moment, at all of 440 gr, our little hedgehog child must remain with us to have a chance to survive the winter, or we track down some association of which he has heard, somewhere near Beauvais. 

He had a treatment for worms and other intestinal parasites, which might be causing the blood in his stools, and he had his first antibiotic treatment by injection. I have a little bottle of antibiotic powder to mix with water and an oral syringe to give him 3 drops, morning and evening. For a week or so, I suppose. 

In three weeks, he gets another deworming. A drop from the little pipette on his skin, between the spines.

Dr. Zumsteg pronounced him rather parasite free, at least on the surface. I didn't mention that I had just removed another tic that must have been too small to see when we found him, at the counter, and the technician kindly passed me a trash basket into which to drop its rotund with blood disgustingness, tiny little legs milling in the air.

Meanwhile, I need to keep his Fanta bottle full of nice warm water and hope his appetite returns.

And, no one laughed.
....

X gets his antibiotic shot

The little hedgehog

Unwell

I only have a few moments before we leave for the veterinary clinic. I finally summoned up the courage to call our clinic nearby and confess that I had recovered another animal, a very young hedgehog, probably too young to hibernate successfully, and who seemed sick when I brought him home a week ago last night.

I was on my way home, racing down the road from the ridge to our road in the old Fiat Uno, with the new Marco Simoncelli sticker on the back end, when the high beams caught a small, rounded figure not far from the center of the narrow road. I just had the time and space to slow and swerve left, continued on a bit, and then braked and put the car in reverse. It had to be a hedgehog, and we have all seen what becomes of hedgehogs left to their own devices on the road at night, particularly, it seems, at this time of the year, when the weather turns cold, and the asphalt holds the heat of the day's sunshine, attracting unsuspecting hedgehogs to their death under our wheels. 

I only backed up a short way before it occurred to me that one can as easily run over a hedgehog in reverse as one can in 5th, so, I stopped the car, put the warning lights on and walked back up the road, using my Blackberry for a flashlight. There is was, a little further across the road from where from front wheel had nearly done it in. I picked it up, and it curled into a tight ball around my fingers, spines sticking straight out. We headed back to the car, flashing in the dark, and I opened the rear end  -- and now that I think about it, I remember that it was the other car, or I would never have put it in the back end --, and settled it into a corner for the short trip home. 

The last time I had found a hedgehog in the street, a fall evening out walking Baccarat and Rapide, 4 years ago, I carried it home in my L.L. Bean anorak shell. It was covered in blood-gorged tics and fleas, and we only kept it inside a night before releasing it into the garden, where it promptly disappeared for good; we'd hardly had the time to name him Harry before he was history, and much to my husband's chagrin because he wanted a garden hedgehog in the worst way.

We both think they are adorable, and they eat insects.

Here was my chance to bring home our new garden hedgehog, only it was small and not exactly well. It made rasping sounds when it breathed, and when it pooped in my lap, it was tarry and black. A sign of blood in the feces, or internal bleeding of some sort.

It settled into the space behind the wood stove in the fireplace, and rasped on through the night. I hoped it was nerves that made its breathing so loud. My doctor husband suspected otherwise. I did, too, to be honest. A respiratory infection, and that would need antibiotics, which would require a vet, and I felt a little embarrassed about calling ours for another found creature.

The next morning, I came down to check on it, after awaking from a dream in which my husband had inexplicably cut the piping on the wood stove and disconnected all of the electroménager in the house while I was sleeping. This might have had something to do with the recent failure of our clothes dryer, in addition to the hedgehog's presence behind the wood stove, where it had curled to hide in safety and relative snug warmth. The towel where it had started the night was empty, but I could hear breathing coming from the wood stove. Louder than ever. I put my hand back behind it and felt nothing. I sat back on my heels and thought. This was impossible. It couldn't be in the stove, and it wasn't next to or behind the stove, but I could hear it.

I looked up into the space above, where the chimney tube disappears up through the ceiling the installers put in the chimney to close it off. Ridiculous. They might have claws, but they can't crawl up walls, even when they are made of horizontal rows of very thin brick, and jump across to... what?

Where was the hedgehog? 

I ran my hands along the skirt of the wood stove, around to the back to the middle, and there was a hole. A hole in the skirt. I had never seen the back of the unit, not really, so I didn't know there was a hole into which a hedgehog could crawl. Squeezing as far in alongside the wood stove as I could fit and reaching my hand through the opening as far as I could reach, I could just feel the tips of its spines. It moved further away. I tried not to panic, although I don't know it would have posed such a problem had it decided to stay. It would eventually come out, but I didn't think about that right away. 

I reached for the stick I use to poke the fire, maneuvered it carefully into the hole and alongside what I hoped were the hedgehog's flanks and pushed, hoping it wouldn't figure out a way to escape the stick and nestle further away. I edged it closer to the hole, and , without setting the stick down, I moved my hand down it until I felt the spines. It was right there. I could get my hand alongside and pull it out. 

It didn't look happy. 

I took two good-sized logs and blocked its access to the rear, at the level of the hole, sat it back down, and it crawled up onto the logs and went to sleep for the day. 

That was Monday, a week ago. Since then, we have removed its tics, determined that it is a little girl, listened to her breathing quiet a little, tried to feed her what the excellent British Hedgehog Preservation Society site told me she would like most (the British are phenomenal with everything wildlife, rescue and preservation) and I read up on young hedgehogs, the possibility of taming hedgehogs, when to release them, and at what minimal weigh, and the thing that stood out was that this little girl was too little to survive the winter. She is a what they call an "autumn juvenile", and even when you rescue them crossing a road and they appear in good health, it is best, they say, to take them to a hedgehog care giver because they are just too young to have a good chance of making it to the spring, and if they do, they come out of the winter months weakly, with less of a chance to survive.

And still she rasped on, but she ate a little of the chicken scallop I prepared for her, and the English digestive biscuits I got at the grocery store here near home, in France. And then she started to eat less.

Twice, she bit me. The first time, I got her teeth off before she broke the skin. The second time, I bled fairly freely. My husband thought maybe it was time for our small, prickly, adorable guest to go, as much as he hoped for a garden hedgehog and thought she was precious.

"Mais, je pensais que tu voulais essayer de l'apprivoiser, juste assez pour qu'elle fasse son chez elle dans notre jardin?"

"Oui," he wanted her to be tamed enough to make our garden her home base, "mais, pas si elle t'attaque." But, not if she attacked me.

That made sense. Still, he was the one who wanted a garden hedgehog, and I was not opposed, even if it does mean no snail pellets. And, she is cute.

Only, she is not doing well. I think she is failing, and it turns out that Dr. Zumsteg knows a lot about hedgehogs. I am hoping it's lungworms or a tiny little respiratory infection de rien de tout, and that a little antibiotic and deworming and a solution for the winter months will see her through.

Off we go.

....

Super Sic

For two weeks, I have watched videos, read tributes, looked at photos, and I have cried.

He was not my son. He was not my brother, my lover, my teammate or my friend. And, still I have cried.

Not a tear or two, but streams of tears. I have looked toward the sky, and I have asked why.

The day after he died, his mother came out of their home to comfort the dozens of fans gathered in mourning, and she said, "Non piangete, non piangete per lui. Marco non avrebbe mai voluto vedervi piangere."

Don't cry, don't cry for him. Marco would never have wanted to see you cry.

But, Marco never knew we'd see him die, at 24, coming out of a turn on the second lap at Sepang International Circuit. He couldn't have asked us to smile, like he always did, for everything, and he has seen many tears, tens of thousands of fans with tears in their eyes, quiet, silenced, crying.

Rosella, noi piangiamo per lui, per voi, per Paolo, per Martina, per Kate e per tutta la famiglia San Carlo Honda Gresini e MotoGP. Per Vale, e per Colin.

We cry because he was young, and he was joy. Because he had a talent and a drive to use it. He was criticized. He said he was learning, and that he would make mistakes. Jorge Lorenzo told him it was not a problem, until something happened. He said, "Then, I will be arrest," and he smiled that smile that sends problems out of the room, off the track, away from Marco.

And then, there was a problem, and he was not "arrest", he died. Jorge at least had a valid point.

"Maybe the other riders can tell when someone is going to die racing, like we can tell when someone is some guy is going to die on the road," my son mused. We, all of those who ride des deux roues. 

It came too soon, before Marco had a chance to learn more. Before we had a chance to see if you can drive the pace, race aggressively, thread the smallest hole, take the throttle to limits others place somewhere before them and then calibrate a distance from which to observe the consequences. His fans, the whole world of racing, suddenly, it seems, was holding its breath, waiting to see how close you may come to that limit, how real you may make MotoGP racing in the Catégorie Reine, the 800cc bikes, without a problem happening.

The kind of problem that would get you "arrest", or perhaps flirt mortally with your death.

From outside, from a fan's place in front of the articles, all of the reaction on the Internet, the sides form: Marco Simoncelli was too aggressive, he was a problem waiting to happen, he -- maybe -- invited his own death; Jorge Lorenzo was prescient; or, Super Sic was the bright spot, the thrill, the color in a sport that is becoming risk adverse, almost to the point of demanding that the bikes be equipped, as one fan put it, with turn signal lights for passing and brake lights for braking before turns; he was the future of MotoGP's ultimate category, la catégorie reine; he was the natural heir, they said, to his friend Valentino Rossi.

It was "bad luck". It was an accident. Or, it wasn't maybe so much an accident; it was an accident waiting to happen because he flew too high, too fast, without regard for the truth of the consequences, to the thrill of the fans, to the admiration of the MotoGP riders who have retired and watch him from the paddock, and who saw in him one of the greatest future riders, like 1993 MotoGP 500cc World Champion Kevin Schwantz, who wrote the day after his death in Malaysia, "There were three standouts in the sport, and now there are two. I'm probably going to get under some people's skin saying this, but it's Maverick Vinales, Marc Marquez, and it was Simoncelli."

Marco won't have the future to show what experience in his class, the tempering of time and maturity, would have made of him, but his legions of fans, enough to fill Indy, have had a chance to show him what he meant to them.

Two weeks after he died, on the last race day of the season, the world of MotoGP made a fitting tribute to a young man with a perpetual smile and hair that bounced as joyfully around his head as he raced around a track and bounced through the paddocks and our lives.

Schwantz, his hero, mentor, supporter, and friend, rode Marco's Gresini Honda RCV212 at the head of the memorial lap at Valencia, followed by the riders of all three categories -- the first time all three categories have taken to the track at the same time -- and a minute of noise; his father said it would be more fitting to his boisterousness than a moment of silence. Vale Rossi had a helmet made, a mix of their two helmet designs, and carried Marco's flag. Loris Capirossi, his friend and his adversary on the track, racing the last race of his career, replaced the 65 on his bike with Marco's 58 and finished the race in tears behind his visor; one rider ending his career in retirement rode under the number of another who died racing two weeks earlier.

But, how to explain why this death hurts so much more than others? The combined effect of his and other deaths, like Shoya Tomizawa's last year and Daijiro Kato in 2003, along with the deaths of other people in our lives? I think of two young women, not yet 20 years of age, who came to the ER when my husband was on duty last year, at several months apart, both of whom complained of abdominal pain, and both of whom had cancers that would certainly end their lives before they got to be another year older. The first died in July. The second just one month ago. My black lab, Baccarat, who at 4 was far too young to die last summer of a tumor in her heart, and break ours.

Is it because of his smile, his infectious happiness that shone right through the television screen and made friends and family of all of us?

The accident was at 10:30 in the morning in France, during the Rugby World Cup. Normally, we would have watched the MotoGP races in the afternoon. For some reason, we did not that Sunday. In the evening, my husband turned his laptop toward me and asked if I remembered the face that grinned from the screen, the glorious mop of soft, curly brown hair as big as the smile.

"Oui."

"Il est mort aujourd'hui." Il est mort. Il est mort aujourd'hui. Mort.

"Comment cela?"

"Un accident vraiment violent dans le deuxième tour à Sepang, en Malaysie."

I don't remember the next moments, but I remember all of them since then, searching YouTube and MotoGP for video of the accident, of the press conference, of the funeral, and searching Twitter and the Internet for the comments of his fellow riders, his family, Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards, both of whose motorcycles struck the upper body and head of Marco Simoncelli after he lost control in a turn and started to skid toward the sand at the outside of the track, hanging onto the bike laid out along the right side. He disappears from the video, and then, he and his bike veer back in frame, the rear tire of his motorcycle apparently having regained traction, sending him back across the track and directly into the path of Edwards and Rossi.

Why didn't he let go? Could he not let go? Was he somehow stuck? Was it, as some supposed, his indomitable spirit of competition that made him want to hang on and try to get control of his bike again and continue the race? Had something happened to him already, as others, completely at a loss to understand how this could have happened, have wondered?

An instant. Edwards and Rossi are fighting to position, coming out of the turn, Rossi on the inside, their bikes practically touching, and suddenly Marco and his bike skid into their path, Marco's back, from the buttocks up, exposed to Edwards' front tire, which hits Marco in the back, spinning him around between their bikes, and in the split second, Vale's front tire hits his head, an impact so sudden and violent that it tears Marco's helmet off and sends it flying, rolling, bouncing behind where Edwards and his bike, cartwheeling from the track and into the grass, come to a stop. It rocks, and it lies still. Marco's body, inert, skids along the asphalt and comes to a rest. His leg, slightly elevated, falls to its rest.

"His helmet never should have come off," my son said. "His face, it was on the asphalt --"

This, too. His face. The animated, beautiful part of him that never seemed to feel the slightest need to restrict your access to his joy in everything. It slid, bare and unprotected, along the rough asphalt. His skin on the rough asphalt. It felt like a sacrilege.

More questions. Why did his helmet come off? Eurosport's commentator Régis Laconi, ex-MotoGP rider, retired himself after a serious accident, reacted at the same time the public was watching live, "Comment ça se fait que son casque se soit enlevé, c'est pas possible? Un casque ne peut pas s'enlever pour un pilote." How is it that his helmet came off, how is that possible? A helmet can't come off a pilot.

Disbelief. These helmets are designed for race conditions, intended to withstand the worst shock in order to protect the head. That the helmet could be ripped from the rider's head is unthinkable. That Simoncelli's cheek should have to touch the asphalt, was the most shocking indication of the truth: the vulnerability of the riders in each race. Race after race, one or more riders go down, sliding with their bikes into the grass, the sand, and most often, they get up, rush to their bikes and try to get them back up, with the help of track staff, and try to make up their lost time, slapping their thigh in fury and frustration when it's not possible.

His vulnerability, his skin touching the asphalt, his body broken, his life leaving him, left him, alone on the track, with Colin Edwards equally alone and untouchable only meters away, bent double, holding his head in his hands in pain, disbelief and shock, the helicopter hovering, sending us these images, Shoya Tomizawa's body projected from his bike last year, hit by another bike and sent skidding down the track, spinning around and around and around before he came to a stop, like Marco now, this vulnerability like the simplicity of his joys, his availability to his fans, and his terrible youth made him vulnerable.

Marco was willing to be vulnerable, and we knew it, and we loved him.

He was only 4 years older than my son, who is the same age as Tomizawa was when he died last year. They are professionals at 16, world champions at 21, and younger. They are dead at 20, at 24; they know what comes next while we look skyward and wonder if they see us still, if they hear our thoughts for them.

If Marco does, then he has heard 91,000 on the MotoGP site's place for fan tributes. He is constantly hearing us and seeing us cry, for nearly everyone who has left a word for him speaks of their tears and of being "gutted" by the news of his death.

"Non piangete, non piangete per lui. Marco non avrebbe mai voluto vedervi piangere."

Marco has to see us cry because we can't help it. Io piango, noi piagiamo per lui, Rosella.

"Il était attachant, avec ses grands cheveux et son sourire," said my husband.

We watch the tributes together, the races now. He is sometimes critical of Super Sic's aggressive style, but maybe like a father. He, motard that he has been these 30 and more years, could never have let his son race like this for fear of losing him, but that is what Marco did, and his parents let him live his dreams.

I like the notion of him being the fastest angel, the fastest star in the heavens now; a perfect racetrack and bike under him, and Tomizawa and Kato, and everyone else who has died racing on a MotoGP circuit, rooting for his friends and colleagues and smiling, always smiling. Life was simple for Marco; it was a single wire, a conductor of happiness and warmth. Marco knows what comes next now, but the rest of us will have to live without him making the races exciting, our Sundays brighter for his grin, his sparkling, laughing, warm eyes, and wait to see for ourselves, with our quieter, tamer lives perhaps less lived, if longer.

RIP, Super Sic. We love you. 58 forever.

Marco Simoncelli highlights of 2011 | RIP 1987-2011 from Beau Nascimento on Vimeo.
...

Red skies

August 6, 2011, 9:30 pm

Sam took these photographs as the sky changed from blue-gray to red-violet-orange with the setting sun and the approaching storm, the same night rioting and looting began in Tottenham High Street.

police people black local road Broadwater Tottenham riot search community riots racial Farm Haringey tensions .broadwater farm. high stop night human rioting death .racial tensions. kind youths area Duggan .young people. .high road. years young Tawiah guy dealers .local community. church time .police station. .nice guy. .black people. Griffith shops knew Duggan's nice heart situation .broadwater farm riot. youngsters Youth making triggered running Alfred .black youths. scale resident Michelle cars Group

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14436529

Civil society is reciprocal, and inclusive.

....

Scenes from the longest way home

The fishing pond

This is a countryside across which Monet traveled and set up his easel to paint the fields and the stands of trees, the village and the church of Vétheuil. An easy ride from his home in Giverny, on the other bank of the Seine, just a bit farther along the Seine towards Normandy.

This evening, my object was to ride and take advantage of a rare moment without rain, but I took my camera. Just in case.

It was lovely, riding along in the dimming evening light. Quiet but for the laughter and the voices carrying across the water of the nearby "base de loisirs" in the clear summer air, chilly for early August, but the sounds of vacationers enjoying themselves regardless of the need for fleece jackets and sweaters, and a campfire by the little lake brought a little summer back. So does riding my bicycle along roads I normally travel by car, or scarcely ever take, as close as they are to home, the same roads Monet took, when they were probably nothing more than lanes.

It was the very same light that brought Money here to paint, and urges me to bring my camera wherever I go. I could well have taken many more photographs, but I will leave them for another time. I keep telling myself I will paint again.

Right after I finish renovating the house.

....

My own personal strike

The road home across the fields

Bastille Day weekend. We left on the motorcycle for Dordogne and rode for hours down past Chartres, across the wheat fields of the Beauce past Châteaudun and Vendôme to Blois, on to Tour and to the highway south towards Bordeaux. We'd get off in Angoulême and take the "routes" through the villages: Sainte Catherine, La Rochebeaucourt, Vertillac, Ribérac and on to Mussidan. We passed the aires d'autoroutes, with their stations services announcing 1.60 euros a liter for 95 octane gasoline.

I do my best mental math passing stations services. 1.60 euros at the current exchange rate is $1.42. It hasn't changed much since July 11. A gallon is about 3.79 liters.

1.60 euros a liter translates into 1.42(1.60 x 3.79) = $8.61 per gallon.

OK, so we get universal, single payer health care that is the best in the world, and probably some other stuff, but I remember when it was about 1 euro a liter, and the euro was trading at more or less parity with the dollar.

Those days are long (about 9 years) passed.

I rode along behind my husband, glad we had taken the motorcycle at about 6 liters/100 km, versus the BMW wagon at more like 10 or 11 liters/100 km, and my heart felt heavy for a generation entering a world where it is normal to pay what I treasured for a week's groceries while in college on a couple liters of gasoline. How, I wondered, were they going to do it? How many, I asked myself, watching the Charente pass alongside our motorcycle, would be staying home this summer, owing to the cost of a tank of gas?

I felt indescribably sad.

When I got home, I took my bike out of the garage, newly equipped with an easily removable front basket and saddlebags to let me take it on errands, and told my car, even my motorcycle, that we'd not be seeing so much of one another; I'd be using my bike for as many kilometers of necessary transportation as possible. On a daily basis, if it came to that, all the way into Mantes, or 14 km one way, or up to the post office and supermarket, about 5 kilometers from home. I'd also had it outfitted with a small device that tells me how many kilometers I have traveled, my current speed, my average speed, and the time of day. I can reset it. I don't bother. I like watching the kilometers add up. 100 for the month of July. That's a good 12 liters of gasoline, and at 1.60 euros or so the liter, that's more than 16 euros saved.

My own private strike.

I like to imagine the liter bottles lining up toward the horizon out beyond my handle bars, and with the basket and saddle bags, here is a list from a recent shopping trip of everything I could carry home:

2 1 liter bottles of eau gazeuse

1 1.5 liter bottle of Coca-Cola

1 1 liter bottle of milk (demi-écrémé, or a little lighter than whole milk... that's a joke)

12 saucisses and merguez

6 chicken breasts

1 package of 6 "minis" pain de campagne

12 free-range eggs

2 avocados

3 pears

1 bunch of organic bananas

1 kg pommes de terres nouvelles

1 bag of arugula

1 bags of hard candy (for my husband, who after more than 20 years smoke-free, still wants to smoke)

1 box of cereal

1 package of galettes de sarasin

1 pack of 6 slices of ham

Cheese

Since it's only 4.5 km home, I take the longest way possible and ride as fast as I can.

But, there was more than my own private strike. There have been months of a frightening lack of motivation to move, and something about turning 50 soon has been leading me back into my past, like when I was in high school and then college in New York City, and all I had for transportation was my Peugeot uO10 bike.

Mine was blue, and God how I loved that bicycle. It was the first thing I ever bought with my own money, from my first job, waiting tables at Bergson's Ice Cream & Sandwich Shop in the mall where I grew up, and I probably paid about the same thing they are going for today.

I rode it to work, I rode it for pleasure. I raced trucks just like in the movies, and I felt the thrill and the pride of using my own body's energy to move like the wind. It lasted until one summer, when I left it in the storage area at St. A's at Columbia, and returned to find the frame bent. Someone had taken it out and had an accident and never confessed they'd ruined my bike. It was pronounced beyond repair.

I never threw it away. Like my old skis, it's at my mother's home, purgatory for things I loved but couldn't justify paying to have shipped in the container here, along with my son's worldly possessions -- all except his baby and toddler years toys --, my books, and a bunch of IKEA furniture I need to have my head examined for paying to ship.

I'd ride my bike again, I decided, just like when I was 16, and 24.

My bike now is a Marin San Rafael. One of the first splurges I permitted myself once I was working again as an architect, when Sam was in elementary school. He got one, too. I justified it by the hills in Greenwich, but Sam never proved to be anything near an avid bicycle rider. He distrusted his bicycle and its brakes, and we scarcely used them, but they came here, and I have ridden mine, on and off, over the 9 years since we arrived. Less than I ever thought I would. First of all, my husband has a tank he can't ride more than a few kilometers without dying (not motivating), and second, we live far away enough from anything to make riding one's bicycle to get to it a chore. Unless you see it in health and philosophical terms.

Which I do.

Riding up to the curb by our house the other evening, my bike loaded with the weekend's groceries and winded from taking the long way home, I came across my neighbor, just home from their family vacation in Corsica, coming out of his house. Usually, he would cross the street to "faire la bise", but I think something about my physical state kept him on his side of the street. Feeling rather proud of myself (he runs regularly, which is more than I can say for myself these days), I explained what I was doing, my private strike.

"Ah, c'est bien quelque chose qu'on ferait aux States," he said, with a touch of playful admiration, just playful enough to be construed as ironique, or teasing, but just admiring enough to pass for -- admiring. I chose to accept the latter.

It's funny how anything that wouldn't necessarily cross one's own mind must belong to another nation, if the mind it does cross has anything to do with another -- nation.

Like my brother-in-law français once remarked during a dinner party, when my husband and I were glad to be separated by several friends, with more than a touch of astonishment and bewilderment of my marriage, "everything takes on international proportions in your relationship."

....

Fia and the frogs

Fia, on her first birthday Friday

"Mom?" came Sam's voice from upstairs.

"Yes, Sam?"

"I think Fia has a frog in her mouth."

I was up and off the sofa and out the living room door in a frog's heartbeat. She was in the garden, next to the fish-pond-in-an-old-fountain, and watched me approach.

"Fia, crache-moi ça."

She looked at me, mouth suspiciously tightly closed, and hesitated, glanced down and looked back at me, mouth still shut tight as an oyster. Anyone who knows dogs knows that this is not how they great someone they love, unless they happen to have a frog in their mouths. Ordinarily, there is a pink tongue hanging out, and a lot of eager breathing.

"Crache," I ordered in such a way as to make it abundantly clear that I knew that she had a frog in there and that she had no alternative but to release it. Immediately.

And she did, being a very obedient dog -- who understands the command "spit that thing out of your mouth right this second", this not being the first time I have had to instruct her to release a frog from her gueule --, and out plopped an intact, breathing and blinking medium-size, emerald green frog, landing on his belly in the grass in a perfectly ordinary frog posture, looking little worse for the experience.

"Fia," I shook my head and stared at her, wordlessly communicating all the displeasure I felt alongside a sort of enchantment. I picked the frog up, felt its a tad overly warm belly beat against my palm, and then set it on a lily pad.

It had disappeared into the water in the time it took me to step inside for my camera, but by then, Sam had appeared.

"You ready to leave soon?" he asked. We were going to the train station. I nodded.

"There was a frog in her mouth," I told him.

"Yeah," he said. "She was lying next to it before, and then I saw her pick it up."

"I guess that's what you have to do when you don't have fingers and a palm in which to carry your little friends," I said.

It certainly is a lot stuffier and hotter in there, though, than it is in a hand, or even in a boy's trouser pocket.

Next, I am going to teach her how to release them back into the pond-in-the-old-fountain. Frog capture and retrieval system, to protect them from the much less delicate cats.

....