Weather It Is (Not Too Cold For A Frog)

Good Afternoon:

My mom tells me that my favorite childhood story was a picture book about a boy and a frog. So, you can imagine what a pleasant surprise we received Friday evening.

Well, if you can't, I will tell you.  I was in the kitchen doing my part to be on the "good-list" of husbands (washing dishes) when there was a knock on the door.  Much to my surprise there were 4 Calzones outside our door.  These are actually the children of our Italian neighbours.  They had a very important question: "what do frogs eat?"

You see, they had bought a very fresh head of lettuce a few days previously, which they decided to eat for the Friday night meal (with their Challah, egg salad, and Babaganoush (of course)).  Fortunately, the young man in charge of washing and cutting the lettuce did neither until he had ascertained that there were indeed no frogs in his head of lettuce.  Except there was -- a (small) frog.

It was a very cold frog, of course, but (heck) frogs don't really care as long as they get a chance to warm up once in a while.

My guess is that the company that sold the lettuce is trying a new form of bug control. Forget the chemicals, and go organic -- as frogs eat lots of insects and other things (like meal worms).

They let the frog go Friday evening.  It was, however, rather chilly Friday night (before Shabbat turned much warmer), so I bet the frog couldn't really tell the difference between his old habitat (among the lettuce leaves) and the back yard.

Fortunately, today is a bit warmer than yesterday, and tomorrow will be warmer than today. In fact, it's going to warm up to rather comfortable summertime levels over the few days and the heat will last into mid next week. At this time we can see that it will be quite a bit warmer than the last couple of days, but we can't yet tell how warm -- although we know temperatures should generally rise to the upper 20s to low 30s.

As we head towards the middle of the month there should be a general cooling to temperatures usually associated with late spring than summer, and some folks might wonder why (or at least, where is summer).

In any case, temperatures should be in a comfortable range for our (now) backyard frog.

By the way, the boy goes out to catch the frog, but the frog is too smart for him.  The boy goes home disappointed.  The frog is left by himself, and wonders if he might have been just a little bit too smart for the boy and even for himself.  He looks one way and the other, and then follows the boy home, and is quite happy to jump in his hot bath as well.  So, you can see that frogs are really quite versatile, and maybe a better way to keep our lettuce clean.

What did I learn from this book? It's nice to have a friend, even if he's green.

Barry Lynn