Grunt - 20 Februarie 2013

It all began a couple of weeks ago during supper time. Our Scottie, not usually the most energetic of beasts, started sniffing the CD racks with a kind of manic enthusiasm. In the five years we’ve had the little fellow, he’s never shown a particular preference for one type of music; he has a distinctly eclectic taste. He lends a discriminating ear to everything we listen to. So we were a little bewildered by this eagerness.

We looked for specimens of the previous visitors we’ve had over the years: mice and snakes, bats and birds. Nothing crawling, flying, flapping, or scurrying anywhere. And yet the beast persisted, shoving his snoot between precariously balanced towers of CDs, then whining and staring.  Once I’d moved a pile of discs to let him get into the action, he began a serious investigation of a file next to the CDs. I opened it gingerly. Comfortably ensconced against the lever arch mechanism was a large and singularly unperturbed frog. He stayed exactly where he was, without a flicker of movement. For an instant, I thought he might be dead, until I caught the quick blink of an eye. I dropped a cloth over him – actually I haven’t the faintest clue what its gender was, but it seemed bold enough and calm enough to be a male – to prevent him jumping too far. I took him out to the back gate and released him into the wet night grass. He hopped away rhythmically.

We had no more uninvited guests for several weeks. That is, until began the same frantic ritual all over again. I opted for the file, but it was empty – of frogs, that is. I took out several layers of discs from the racks. On a shelf about thirty centimetres from the floor, staring me squarely in the face was The Frog, squatting firmly in a CD of Mahler’s First Symphony. Is there anything symbolic in the fact that he chose Mahler?  I put him outside again, but he’ll be back. Not for our company perhaps, but he’s crazy about our music!