Why?
Take a seat and I will explain to you one of the greatest mysteries known to mankind. Why so many, normally rational, people are terrified of the seemingly harmless green frog, which although having no great fangs (in fact it has no teeth at all), no razor sharp claws (its fingers and toes being tipped by soft suckers) or deadly poison to its name still heads the terror list for women, children and occasionally men as well, around the globe.
Now let me set the scene for you.
After a tiring, stressful day, where not one thing has gone right, you collapse exhausted into your chair in front of the TV and cradle your last cup of coffee for the night as your eyelids start to droop. On the screen someone is droning on about something, but you have long since stopped listening, the throbbing in your tired feet is echoed by a pounding in your head, and you consider taking something for the coming headache, but instead just stagger directly to bed leaving the half empty mug sitting on the coffee table.
Halfway through a pitch black, moonless night you are wrenched from a restless sleep by pains both in your head and groin. Your head is screaming, and the words drift aimlessly around inside it, cursing the last coffee you should not have had so close to going to bed, and you stumble through the darkness to the toilet.
The light stabs painfully through your half closed eyes and you quickly flick it off once more, and gently you settle your bared posterior on the chilly toilet seat. You grimace for a few seconds until your skin becomes used to the chill, and then settle back into a half dream, slowly starting to relax.
But there the green frog has set his ambush, carefully camouflaged under the rim of the toilet bowl. His wide mouth spreads wider in a grin of malicious pleasure as he hears that peaceful sigh, and sees the tenseness go from the soft white muscles just inches above his head, and he launches himself like a rocket, gripping that softest, most tender skin with his cold, little suckers, its ambush completely unexpected.
The neighbours are awakened by horrific screams, and race to their phones. The police and paramedics are called, arriving in a tumult of sirens. The police are first to enter, guns at the ready, expecting the worst. Your front door is kicked in and as they flick on the lights and storm into your home they find you in the living room, eyes still wide in terror, pants around your ankles, the tell tale signs of green frog's sucker marks still obvious to all.
The cunning green frog has slunk back into the shadows of the toilet bowl again at the first sign of real opposition, as not even a frog takes the thought lightly of facing twenty heavily armed and edgy policemen in the middle of the night.
The paramedics quickly take over. One thinks to ask if your bowels have moved, but after a quick glance through the still open toilet door, it becomes quickly obvious that they have indeed moved, and it will take quite a while to remove the evidence that is on the walls, floor and even the ceiling.
Within seconds they have you on your way to the emergency ward, your heart is beating so fast still that they are worried that you are about to have a heart attack. The nurse on duty signs you in under the heading "frog attack" amidst a growing list of names, covering a smile behind her hand, and as they wheel you away you hear the snickering of the paramedics drifting down the empty corridors.
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Now do you understand the terror that the "seemingly harmless” green frog can inspire? Before you next go to the toilet, be sure to check under the rim very carefully, and remember, somewhere out there is a frog with YOUR name on it.
