Matilda the Frog
Tales From The Frog Pond
NaNoWriMo 2014
Matilda is small and green, has big eyes and very long eyelashes. Matilda is a frog.
Now maybe you have been told that frogs don't have eyelashes, but you have never met Matilda. She is one of a kind. She smiles a lot and likes to swim in the pond in the Summer with her friends.
Who are her friends you ask? Why, other frogs of course. Frogs, fish, turtles, and tadpoles. They all live together in a big pond in Iowa, South of Des Moines and West of Interstate 35.
Now there are a lot of ponds in Iowa and a lot of ponds around Des Moines, but there is only one pond where Matilda lives. That is where our story takes place.
In the evening, Matilda likes to sing. You can hear her singing all the way at the top of the big hill where the Hauschildt family lives.
"Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit," Matilda sings her song until the wee small hours of the morning. She only knows one song, and she sings it over and over and over until she is so sleepy that she can hardly keep her eyes open. Then she turns down the little light by her lily pad and goes to sleep.
Now perhaps you didn't know that frogs have little lights by their lily pads. Well, they do. Their little lights are made of the same substance that fireflies use to light their way at night when they fly around the houses and the trees. Little blinking lights at night let you know that the fireflies are busy and all is well with the world.
One morning in July, Matilda was swimming by the edge of the pond when her friend Boris the Bullfrog popped up beside her.
"Eeeeeeek," squealed Matilda. "You startled me, Boris. You should give a frog a little warning before you pop up like that."
"Sorry, Matilda," said Boris in his deep low down bullfrog voice, "I didn't mean to startle you."
"It's OK, Boris, just give me a little warning next time. You know, like a little croak or a giggle or something, just so I know someone's there."
Boris blinked twice and smiled. Actually, he enjoyed making Matilda jump when he popped up beside her in the water. It was fun. Maybe not for Matilda, but it was fun for him. I mean, after all, how much entertainment did a bullfrog have in a pond?
So he smiled at Matilda and bobbed his head. He wasn't making any promises that he knew he wouldn't keep.
"So Matilda, would you like to go for a swim?" he asked her.
"Sure, Boris," she answered. "Where would you like to go?"
"You lead the way and I'll follow," he said, and he took a deep breath of air and ducked his head under the water again.
Matilda thought for a minute and then she knew exactly where she wanted to go. With a swirl of water, she held her breath, ducked down and began to swim deeper below the surface.
Boris followed her, and together they swam along the edge of the pond towards the tall cattails at the other end. She could see Boris out of the corner of her eye.
Matilda loved to swim, and today was a perfect summer day. The sun was shining and the water was warm. A light summer breeze was blowing, and it ruffled the surface of the water, making it sparkle like diamonds.
Boris was a strong swimmer. As soon as he figured out where she was headed, he swam on ahead of her and reached the cattails before she did. They popped up out of the water in the middle of the cattails at nearly the same time. Boris was just a little bit ahead of her.
Boris had a much deeper frog voice than Matilda. He was a bullfrog. While Matilda made a frog song that sounded like "Ribbit, ribbit," Boris's voice sounded more like "Row-boat, row-boat".
Together, they sang a duet. Matilda was singing "Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit", and Boris sang "Row-boat, row-boat, row-boat". It made a very nice frog song on a warm Summer morning.
Someone else was there at the pond that day. Boris and Matilda were so caught up in singing together that they didn't notice when Goldene Ray joined them on the other side of the cattails.
Goldene didn't like to get his feet wet. He didn't like to swim either. What he did like to do was catch frogs. He would hide behind the cattails until an unsuspecting frog climbed out of the water. Then Goldene Ray would pounce on the frog in a very rude way, scaring them witless. Goldene Ray didn't want to eat the frog, he just wanted to make him croak. He loved the funny little sound the frog would make when he got the wind knocked out of him. Goldene Ray was a bully of a cat.
Goldene Ray was crouched down behind the cattails and he was trying to be very still and invisible. He was super quiet, barely blinking, and the only part of his cat-body that moved was the tip of his tail. When he was excited, he just couldn't keep the tip of his tail from twitching. It gave him away every time.
It was that twitching tail that saved Boris and Matilda from getting the wind knocked out of them on that summer day.
Boris looked up out of the water in the middle of his duet with Matilda and caught a glimpse of that twitching tail.
"Matilda, jump!" he croaked, and he went "Earp!" and jumped back into the water.
"Earp!" squawked Matilda, and she jumped right behind Boris.
They swam back out into the middle of the pond and looked back at where Goldene Ray was hiding behind the cattails.
"Meeeooowww!" said Goldene, annoyed that they had spotted him before he could leap. He stood up and whipped his tail a couple of times and trotted back up the big hill to the house. He would find something else to play with there.
"Oh, Boris, I'm so glad you spotted the cat," whispered Matilda, still frightened at their close call.
"Glad to be of service, Matilda," replied Boris. "Have we had enough of a swim for one day?"
"I think so," Matilda answered with a smile. "I think I'll go back to my little corner of the pond and take a nap now."
And she did, and they napped and ate bugs and waited for the sun to go down so they could sing again.
The end.
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