How Do You Give A Frog CPR? UPDATE - R.I.P, Funeral...

... Two frogs stationary on the bottom of their bowl for more than 24 hours probably means they've died and gone to amphibian heaven, right?

Guess we have to plan and conduct a funeral and wake...  

As a friend pointed out yesterday: "This is the Cosmos tapping you rudely on the shoulder telling you to pause and take note of your immediate things that deserve care and love and good vibes, and that the macro-world cannot, will not, be changed by any one individual and that actions on it, CAN wait so that you can take care of your micro-world...."

I replied: "I kinda figured that out a couple of days ago, and am in the process of implementing... thanks for being the cosmic echo to confirm I am on track!"

***************************************************** 

If I hurry, I might be able to save the frog that's lying upside down on the bottom of the bowl....

How much good Karma do you lose because you've neglected to clean out the frog bowl in the past week, and the frogs are now showing signs of asphyxiation because there's not enough oxygen in the water any more?

 

Well, frog bowl cleaned... weed not at all a healthy shade of green, but it will come back... snail shells empty... can't tell for sure if the frogs are playing dead, or have really gone to the great lily pad in the sky... Internet frog care websites say these frogs do sometimes lie around upside down... we shall see...

Not sure what to tell the boy when he wakes up...

I'm trying to reassure myself the frogs have survived the odds for much longer than was sensible; we got them as a house-warming present to ourselves two moves ago.   

They were a Hallmark product - two Dwarf African frogs, sold in a tiny hexagonal container with a tiny clipping of weed... The instructions said they were OK to live in small spaces and to only feed them once a week. (I'm guessing that was to stunt their growth!).   Another family we know had the same frogs and said they'd been living in the original container for more than a year...  

When my guilt about their cramped living quarters finally got the better of me and I transferred them to a big bowl, the frogs sat on the bottom for a couple of days, hardly able to move.   I realised that their swimming muscles had atrophied from lack of use; a week or so later and they were doing the froggy/breast-stroke thing really well and they seemed happy...

Oh dear... here's hoping we don't have to have a froggy funeral later this weekend... I'm a minister - never had to make up a funeral service for frogs before... and would we have a separate funeral or a joint one?   What songs would we sing?   Would they get buried or flushed?   And what does one wear to a frog funeral, anyway?

UPDATE 2, 8 SEPTEMBER 2011...

So, the frogs, whose names were Rocky and Diver by the way, lay around in the bottom of the cleaned bowl for a couple of day... and no, they did not come miraculously back to life!

So, I thought that we should do the appropriate thing and bury them today...

Son was most upset - I hadn't realised how attached he was to them (but we have had them for a year, so I don't know why I am surprised)...

I wrapped the frogs in paper towels, with the weed from their bowl and some lavender for blessing and beauty...

Son and I dug a hole in the dirt at the back of the garden, lay the frogs in the hole, I offered "prayers" for their safe journey back to the Life Force, thanks for their time in our lives, and apologies for neglecting them...

Son wanted to cover them up; when I returned to the house, he spent time decorating the grave, with a rock to represent Rocky, a stick to represent Diver and some grass (anchored under another rock) to represent Life...

Then he cried and cried... and cried some more when he looked at the empty space where the frog bowl had been...

Truly, I was surprised... I hadn't thought he was so attached to them - he wouldn't even feed them or help clean out the bowl any more...

But this was the first time he had encountered death up close and personal; his paternal grandmother and uncle both died in the past five years, but his father kept all of that very low key, there were no remembrance ceremonies and son was not really conscious of the process...

It turns out son thinks about his paternal grandmother (Grandma Opal) quite often and he misses her.   And he has wondered about my mother, his Oma, who died in 1994.

So, it's been quite an afternoon, talking about death and where the energy goes and my role in the frogs' demise - I had to explain why I kept putting off cleaning out the bowl/water.

And that's another blog post altogether, to do with overwhelm in the face of more change and doing the best one can with what one has, though I regret that the frogs were at the negative effect of that...

Son is talking about wanting more frogs, or a turtle - he didn't want to wait a few weeks to grieve the recently deceased... 

We're on the move again in a couple of weeks, so we shall see...