The Spider and the Frog Pt 3

I was about 11 years old and with my older cousin who showed me how to add a nail to the end of my bow. He was visiting from up north and we were wandering along the shoreline that extended along land that as far as I knew was Morrisseau land.

The weather was perfect. I remember feeling completely alone. Just me. On a perfect day with a bow and arrow in my hand.  A bow and arrow with a nail on the end of my arrow and I was looking for something to kill.

I gave no thought beyond that thought. With this weapon in hand. It was time to hunt. Hunt? No, nothing was going to be eaten. I was going to practice killing.

I came up a beautiful leapord frog. I was taken aback. I can't explain it. I had a fear frogs. I remember being a little boy in The Pas Manitoba and feeling fear about stepping on a frog or being touched by a frog when I was walking in mud puddles. I couldn't explain it.

I remember watching Hawaii 5-0 after the late night local news and in the episode a kidnapper is wearing a frog mask that fit right over his head. I thought it was terrifying. I also knew that it wasn't rational. I knew that frogs were not dangerous in anyway. This is how I felt.

I don't think I thought of any of those things. I know that I waited and so did the frog. Brilliant green and with a white fleshy throat and belly like a pickeral. It wasn't big. A normal size. Eyes round and alert. I stood over it. All was still but for the frog's white throat, expressing breath, heart and life.

I pulled back the bow string and struck the frog in the middle of its body. The nail sunk most way through the creature's soft body and into the ground below, the sharpened edge of the arrow buried half way.

I don't know what I expected to happen. That is not true. I know what I expected to happen. I expected the frog to die. As I watched in horror and then much worse in sadness and shame, the frog struggled to be free, to be free and to live. It tried to hop free. It moved it's legs in crawling motion. No freedom. No life.

And I cannot kill it. I can't kill it.

I walk away and then sit down on the grass and begin to sob uncontrollably. When my cousin finds me I am unconsolable.

A Visit from Spider and Frog Pt 2

My daughter bounded into the house. "Yuck". What is it? "There's a big fricken' frog sticking to the side of the house." How big. "BIG!"

Sticking to the side of the house. That's a tree frog. But a big one. No. A Big Fricken' Frog. How big is that. I've seen one the size of a small grape but they are usually smaller than that.  I looked out the window and the tree frog was the size of a frog.

I paused. I've never seen that before. Once again. I opened up the door, "Tansi, Ni Na Napayo." I thought of the word, Leegitz. Which is the name my mother had for the girl's privates. I also knew that she used the English word, Frog, to mean the same. Was this the word. I wasn't sure.

What I was sure of was that the word for frog in Anishinaabemowin, the Ojibway language was "Muckie". This I knew because many years ago our second youngest daughter sang a heartfelt and often entertaining version of "Froggie Goes A Courtin'." The song had enough verses in the Anishinaabe language to exceed my entire Cree vocabulary.

"Tansi, Boozhoo, Muckie." My granddaughter and her cousin are curiously watching. I tell them that I think this tree frog is very old, because it's so large and that I have never seen one that size before.

"Tansi, Muckie, Boozhoo, Ahnee" My granddaughter turns to her cousin. "It's an old grandpa talking to an old grandpa." I'm not that old, I think. "Yes, that is an old Muckie, I'm gonna take his picture."

I feel again that I should document this moment. Then, I get that moment of unease. That there are things that should be seen and remembered. That some things are just for you. I know this. But I've made this committment. This is part of the journey. I want to share it.

The girls return

to their game and I open the door back up. I greet Muckie and say that I want to take his picture. I move up slowly. Speaking softly and take a few pictures. I thank him for visiting and wish him well. My favourite is the one take from further away. You can see the trees in the background.

I know that thousands of frogs are singing in the swamp and surrounding trees and other habitat. It is a symphony of our spring and it rises to levels that border cacophony. I have said, in these days, that I envy the frog. Singing to the night. Singing and singing. Fighting and breeding. And singing and singing. Just an insanely joyful expression of life.

The frog has been my teacher for many years. It's the only creature that I can say I had an unreasonable fear of when I was young. It was also the creature onto whom I committed my most regrettable act as a boy.

A Visit from Spider and Frog Pt. 1

With spring blowing up around us, it was time to do some spring cleaning around the yard and start getting ready for gardening. I was in the small shed next to the sugar shack. I looked in a large white pail that I had used in collecting maple sap and where I had also brined my fish for smoking. I had let it sit for a few days filled with water and a little vinegar and then emptied it and put it in the shed. Any excess water would have evaporated and it could be put away.

I reached to pick it up and quickly pulled my hand back to my body. Inside sat the largest spider I have ever seen in my life. A shock wave went through my whole body, that primal instinct that is connected to this creature. This eight legged, many eyed, hunter, trapper. Thinker. Survivor. Drinker of blood.

The spider lives outside the insects. The scientist says that the spider is closer to the crab under the water than he is to any creature that walks upon the earth.

I put the pail down and take a step back and look away. "That is the biggest fucking spider I have ever seen in my whole fucking life." These words just kept firing around in my head. I didn't want to look at it. But I couldn't keep my head up. I could feel my neck exposed.

There was something else in the pail. What was it? It wasn't that. Could it be? No. It couldn't be. But, it sure the hell looked like that. This time, I shivered. I'm sure that I made some expression, some sound. What the hell happened here?

I took a breath. A step forward and I peer cautiously and fully into the pail. It was the biggest fucking spider I have ever seen in my whole fucking life. And next to that glorious creature, the carcass of the second biggest fucking spider I have ever seen in my whole fucking life. I got the shivers again. What the hell happened here?

Yet, all my instinctual shivers and shocks could not overwhelm that sense of complete awe and wonderment of what I was seeing. I went through the list of the largest spiders I had ever seen in my whole life. The one at the putt putt golf course where my mother in law and our oldest son, then around 11  years old, played the greatest game of putt putt  golf in family history. That was the biggest one I could recall. This spider was much much bigger than that.

"Tansi, Spider. Ni Na Napayo". I then told the spider in English that I wanted to take its picture because it was so magnificent. I lifted my head and stepped back and out of the shed. I never took my eye off the edge of the pail.

I went into the house and grabbed my phone. I went back out, picked up the pail and took it outside. The spider just seemed to be watching me. I can't imagine what a creature like that must know. To survive to that size, it must be very old. How must it regard me?

I took a couple of photographs and turned the pail on its side. The giant spider skittered out and under the shed. I turned over the pail and examined the carcass but briefly. Who knows what happened here. Did they both fall into the pail somehow? Is one male and female? Is it one's past left behind.

The questions wash over as the fear did just moments ago. I feel the speed of life grab me again. I'm running out of time. I'm running out of time. I'm running out time.

That night frog comes to visit.

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