Frog Jerky

On her 5th birthday, my youngest daughter, McKenna, asked for and received a couple of exotic Amazonian frogs from her grandparents. The very next day, we noticed that one of the frogs had wedged itself into a compromising position in the plastic terrarium we put them in - in between the plastic landscape and the plastic sides. Mildly concerned, we opened it up and disassembled it - only to discover that the frog had crushed itself to death.

McKenna, however, was only mildly concerned. "I still have Emily," she announced.

"Who's Emily?" I asked.

"The frog that's still alive," she answered.

Ah - of course. Here I was expecting a name like "Ribbit," "Jumpy," or even "Greenie," but no: Emily. What a perfect frog name.

"Emily"

So - fast forward two years; that damn frog somehow clinging to life the entire time. And for those of you who have had young kids know only too well - guess how long until the parents are taking care of it 100% of the time? Right: by day 2.

You've never met a more resilient creature in your entire life. Emily would only eat live bugs, so we had to buy bags of live crickets each week and even keep them alive in an empty oatmeal container in order to provide her the sustenance she needed to continue forging ahead.

But, who has time to feed an effing frog every couple days? Pretty soon we found ourselves in a pattern of feeding Emily 4-5 crickets at once, once a week. She'd eat the lot in a matter of seconds, remain motionless for the next 24 hours as her system digested the animated shapes outlined in her bulging abdomen, then deposit a gigantic frog turd on the fake plastic log in her terrarium. And to justify our efforts, McKenna would occasionally glance at the frog as she passed by. It appeared to be a perfectly harmonious agreement of existence for all involved parties.

But...as time wore on, our diligence to keep Emily alive...waned. Busy lives meant that Emily might wait 10 days between feedings, then two weeks...then maybe even longer. Emily's BMI would change dramatically in between bloated/satiated, to gaunt/sallow.

And we'd wonder - out loud, too many times to count - how the hell is she still alive?! We longed for the day she died...

...until last week, that is. As I was getting the kids' lunches ready last Friday, I looked in Emily's terrarium and didn't see her normally wide-eyed frog eyes boring into my soul and seemingly screaming, "GET ME SOME CRICKETS DUDE!" like usual. Hmm...with visions of her voluntarily choosing the same fate as her brethren from two years ago, I picked up the terrarium and looked in all the nooks and crannies: no Emily.

What the hell?

Had she escaped finally? If so good for her (unless she was still in the house). I asked the girls where she might be (figuring that in the spectrum of possibilities one of them might confess that they wanted to see what happens when you let a frog swim in the dog's water dish or something...), but they didn't know. McKenna came over and immediately found her: "She's dead!"

I had missed her because she had died spread-eagle on top of her fake plastic swamp reeds, like a sky diver, and her desiccated body had shrunk to a wafer thin level, providing a nearly indistinguishable texture and shape to the rest of her environment.

She was frog jerky.

My first thought was: YES! It's over! No more crickets! No more huge amorphous frog turds on fake plastic logs! No more worrying when this damn thing was going to finally and gloriously die!

But then, I kind of felt...bad. Was this our fault, or had she lived a full frog life - or at least as full as you can in a fake plastic terrarium? How many times had we looked in that box expecting her to be a lifeless shape over the past two years? A hundred times? More?

My emotions were mixed between relief that it was finally over, and sadness that her diligent struggle to stay alive in such extreme conditions had finally come to an end. She was a frog jerky hero.

McKenna, however, succinctly summarized her own feelings, "Can we flush her when I get home from school?"

Are you seeing where I'm going with this in relation to last night's Survivor episode? Ben is the frog that died on day 2 - forcing himself into a compromising position and siphoning the life directly out of his own soul because he refused to adapt, refused to bend, refused to survive on terms other than his own.

Because he didn't have enough time to build more complex dimensions of his personality with the viewers, his departure was...anticlimactic, or at least anticlimactic in comparison to how fulfilling it would have been to blindside him somewhere down the line when he least expected it, providing the proper seasoning and texture for a successful frog jerky.

Like our initial unnamed dead frog, Ben thought he could do everything himself, and wouldn't let anyone else even try to help. "Don't even try to use the flint - you'll just waste it," he bitterly tells his tribe. Then to Russell, "Girls can't make fire; they can't do anything useful."

...And, perhaps in the most eerie parallel to our unnamed dead frog, "I just had the biggest poop of my life."

Russell, on the other hand, is Emily. Staying alive. Remaining in control. Pooping all over the place. "Nobody's playing the game but me," he proclaims to the camera, and it's not difficult to agree with him. (Even if he is a colossal douchebag.) "I'm on perhaps the worst tribe ever in the history of Survivor," he continues, "...but I'm the best player ever."

Chilling how similar Emily must have felt in our household as she fought for life numerous times with nary a cricket on the horizon...

Russell, basking in his evil manipulations, even goes so far as to lie to Ben that Ashley was gunning for him in order to cause a huge controversy. And it works perfectly. Similarly, did Emily put the seed of fear in our unnamed frog's cranium way back on the day they arrived, forcing it to want to flee rather than face our forgetful cricket-feeding practices?

Late in the episode, Russell, like Emily, realizing that his desire to manipulate every move could put him in an antagonistic view with the rest of his tribe, quickly adapts to survive. Ben, however, when given an opportunity by Jeff to fess up and apologize for some racist remarks he made, instead answers, "There's nothing I've done to apologize for that I can think of."

Then it's time for your flushing, dude.

So, that leaves us with Evil Emily...uh, I mean Russell. Will he allow his ego to destroy himself? Or will he adapt, pretend to forgive and forget, and live to make his tribemates lives (and ours) a living hell for the next few weeks?

Let's hope it's the latter. And, even more importantly, let's hope that when it finally is his time, that his frog jerky leaves us appreciating his gumption while remembering all his evil ways, but ultimately feeling complete, satisfied...and maybe even a little sad that the anticipation is finally over...

Until next week,

Probst Beef Jerky