On a warm summer morning, driving to work down a tree-lined
residential street, something landed on the hood of my car. The windshield was dewy, so I hit the wipers
to improve the view. It wasn’t a leaf
after all, it was a tree frog, a little smaller than a half-dollar. He managed to hold on when I stopped at the
corner.
A mile down the road, he was still hanging on. When I stopped at a light, he inched toward
the windshield and then leapt into the well where the defrost vents are. I’m no car guy, but I figured whatever was
down there wouldn’t be good for his world view.
Oh, well, I thought, we’re not exactly short of tree frogs on my street.
A couple of blocks later, he jumped out of the wiper well
onto the windshield. I quickly turned
off the wipers so I wouldn’t smear him across the glass or fling him into
traffic. We stared at each other as he
continued his high-risk maneuvers, attempting to climb the still-wet glass to
the top of the car at twenty-five miles an hour, leaving little frog-shaped dry
spots where he landed. He made it to the
top and I turned my attention back to the road just in time to avoid running a
red light.
When I arrived at work, some eight miles away, I hopped out
of the car and immediately searched the top of the car for any sign of
him. He was gone. I’m choosing to believe that we reached his
stop and he hopped off and went his froggy way.
But my mind kept going back to that nearly-missed traffic
signal. Can you imagine the cynical look
on the policeman’s face when I roll down the window and explain, “Well, you
see, there was this frog…”
