Freckles

Hi,
meet Freckles. He's our new tenant. He thinks he owns the place but that is yet to be determined.

Freckles moved in this spring, lock stock and barrel. He has his lily pad all decked out in the latest fashion from Target, including his IPod dock and gamer chair. He thinks he's cool. He's also on Facebook, Twitter and Match.com. He's looking for a babe to share his pad with. How do we know that? You have to hear his mating call, it's pretty amazing. The whole house shakes when he bellows. At first we thought it was a minor earthquake, but it turns out to just be Freckles stretching his vocal chords. What a dude.

I've had to lay down some rules about his tenancy. No late night parties. Take out your own trash. No new holes in the rocks. That sort of thing. His only truly annoying habbit isn't smoking, it's scaring the crap out of me when I walk near the pond. He hides in the flower bed and springs at me. He can jump almost up to my nose. Our new arrangement is that I whistle when I walk around the pond. He either thinks I'm calling him or he hates the sound, either way he gets his ass back in the water pretty quick and checks out the real estate on the bottom of the pool. I no longer run the risk of landing in the muck or on my ass when he tries to startle me. It's working itself out.

Since I can't get him to pay rent, we've worked out an agreement in trade. Freckles is in charge of bug control. I think it's only fair that he pulls his weight, and it is conciderable heft. He's as big as my whole hand out-stretched. No free ride on this lily pad, no sir-ree-bob. He also has minor guard duties at night. Who needs a dog or an alarm when you have a killer frog on patrol. I think we may start a trend in the neighbourhood. 

We would like to welcome Freckles to the block. We hope he becomes a member in good standing and over time, learns to play nice with everyone. No scaring the owners of the house by pouncing in their face. Is that too much to ask? Ribbit.

xox
m