Lions and tigers and... frogs? Oh my...

Every year, on our family's drive to Canada, we would pass Canada's Wonderland. It was right along the QEW, the major highway in Ontario, and we could see the roller coasters from the car. We never stopped as a family, although Sue went one year with the Girl Scouts. As a child, although I enjoyed a week of semi-solitude on a remote Canadian island, I longed to stop at this overpriced tourist trap.

In my adult life, that feeling resurfaced a few times each year. Every time we drove to Ashley's house, Michael and I would pass tourist traps. We never stopped. Since my vacation this year was entirely in my command, I decided I would stop somewhere along the way. Heck, I could even stop at a couple of places. A few weeks earlier, talking it over with Sue, I decided to drive down on Wednesday non-stop, spend Thursday with her and her boys, and take two days to drive back, stopping at every roadside attraction my heart desired.

Now, Michael had, once again, derailed my plans. I could still drive down and see Sue, and she and I could still spend Thursday together. I could even stop at at least one attraction. Maybe even two. But for the long drive back, I would, once again, be driving to see Ashley, and although I would be headed to my home town, I would not be coming home.

I was determined not to let Michael ruin this for me. I stuck to the initial plan, reaching Sue's house in the early evening, in time for dinner with her family. The kids had fun with their cousins, but were wide awake, having slept for most of the trip. They did not all get to sleep until late. But at least they slept without too much wailing for their own beds.

Over the next two days, we had plans to go to an amusement park near Sue's house, and to camp in the backyard, since we hadn't done that last year due to the head lice. On the way home, we would go to the zoo, visit with my "couple friends", and stop at at least two roadside attractions. This would be a truly great vacation.

Then it rained.

No amusement park. No camping in the backyard. We did have sleeping bags in the living room, and smores in the toaster. We took the kids shopping to the biggest pet store I have ever set foot in. It may even be bigger than Walmart, square-footage-wise. I even bought the kids a pet: three aquatic frogs.
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When Michael and I were dating, I was a student at Mansfield University. The school is built on a hillside in northern Pennsylvania. In the summer, it's a beautiful scene: red brick buildings surrounded by carefully landscaped lawns, bordered sporadically by wilds. In the fall, the changing colors are so picturesque I often felt I was looking at artwork when glancing out the window. The winters, however, are harsh. Wind, snow, and sleet coupled with the terrain made for a rough walk to class. I would find paths that cut through the woods to employ the relative shelter of the trees, rather than take a more direct route up the main road, where the wind bore down, impossibly heavy. I would also cut through our cafeteria or the science building, although these routes were longer, because I would have thirty seconds of shelter from the open air.

On one such blustery day, at the start of the spring semester (a laughable term, since it was January) I was walking through the lower levels of the science building when I happened to glance into one of the lab rooms. I had only taken physics labs, and was used to laboratories looking "unused", with the equipment neatly stacked in storage closets somewhere, only removed for the duration of the experiment. This was obviously a biology lab, as there were fish tanks all around the room, apparently holding nothing more than algae. Returning from class, I stopped to examine them more closely, and found that, far from being empty, the tanks all contained frogs. Well, technically, they contained tadpoles. There was a student in there at the time, writing on a clipboard. I asked about the experiment, which concerned population levels in a limited environment. Then I asked what they would do with the tadpoles when the experiment was over. "Dispose of them."

It seemed like such a callous thing to do. "Most of them will go to students who have predatory pets, like piranhas." Dorm policy forbid keeping mammals or birds as pets, but some students had fish. The idea was, if it can escape, you can't keep it here. "Because these are an African species, we can't risk someone releasing them into the wild. We have to kill them."

"What if I wanted to take some as pets, and promised not to release them?" I asked.

"You'd have to talk to our professor," the student replied. Over the next few weeks, I stopped in that lab to check on the tadpoles. Some were developing into frogs, while other tanks still had tadpoles. "Those are new," another student explained. "We just had those shipped in. We have to keep two sets of data now for the old tanks and the new tanks." She looked up from her clipboard. "It's a pain."

"Hey, who's your professor?" I asked. "I want to talk to him." She gave me a name and directions to his office. I found him there later that day, and after promising allegiance to the local ecology, I was permitted to take ten tadpoles. By the time the experiment ended, the tadpoles were starting to change. By the time Michael and I were married, I had seven aquatic frogs. Two died when a three-day power outage turned off the circulation in the tank, and another two died when we moved into our house in 2004. I put the remaining three frogs in a large tupperware dish in the bathroom. It was transparent, cheap, and Michael's aunt wanted her fish tank back. One day, they disappeared. I never found three little frog skeletons. My theory is that our cat saw frogs in tupperware and thought, 'lunch!' Michael's theory is that they jumped out of the tupperware and into the toilet, escaping captivity through the plumbing. And this was before "Finding Nemo" came out. I could not convince him that my idea seemed more likely, especially since aquatic frogs don't have enough leg muscle to "jump" the way that land frogs do. They might get a quarter-inch "hop", but not enough to make it into the toilet.
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So, I knew that they would make a good pet for a six-year-old, since all he'd have to do is feed them. (They have a simbiotic relationship with algae, so you can't clean the tank completely.) Since they're amphibious, he could "hold" them out of the water (albeit briefely) just long enough to get bored with them. And, if they died, it wasn't like I'd spent hundreds of dollars on equipment or shots or flea treatments. For that matter, they make good pets for college students, for all the same reasons.

We already had a small fish tank from our brief ownership of a guinea pig, which escaped, and then two rodents, called degus, which died. And I still had the circulation device from the first time we owned frogs. Sue's boys enjoyed looking at the three frogs (who were all named "Guard dog". I don't know why.) through the clear plastic juice bottle we bought as a temporary home. One of them is still alive, and is the delight of baby Tony, who points and says, "dog!" when he wants the frog to come out and play.
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On Friday morning, I left Sue's house. I had a day and a half to drive four hours. I had enough money for a hotel room (a family adventure, right?) and the courage to take my children somewhere none of us had been before. Before I left, I called Michael. He was the reason I was leaving Friday instead of Saturday or Sunday, losing a potential two days with my sister and nephews, and giving up the chance to actually go to that amusement park or camp out with our families. Plus, I wanted to remind him to bring the computer.