Amphibian

by Carla Gunn

  The problem again is the Gorachs. They are starting to collect Jingleworm tails for jingly bracelets, which they give to their Gorach children. The Gorachs are the parasites, so many of the animals are working on making more symbiotic relationships. The Gorachs are in for a surprise.

  That night I slept with my mother and she didn’t even complain. I think the cat food may have done something to her brain.

  Today my mother made me see Dr. Barrett again. It was my fourth time in his office with the too-high chair. I’m really tired of sitting in that chair. I don’t know why, but it’s hard to think when your feet don’t touch the floor. It’s weird to have them dangling and it makes a fast escape almost impossible – which might explain why he has those chairs.

  After Dr. Barrett asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about (which is always how he starts off), and I said no (which is always my answer), he got out a little thing that looks kind of like a mouse for a computer. He told me it was called a galvanic skin response unit. It had a place for me to put two fingers and it was supposed to show how stressed I felt by measuring how sweaty the skin of my hand was. Dr. Barrett then hooked it up to his computer and clicked on a picture of a flying saucer floating in the sky. He told me that I could make the flying saucer go lower and eventually land by calming my mind and my body. He told me to concentrate on something that made me feel calm to see if I could do it.

  With my fingers in Dr. Barrett’s stress unit, I thought of sitting in a tree beside Pete’s Pond. I imagined elephants doing a greeting ceremony. When they haven’t seen each other in a while, they rush together loudly and flap their enormous ears and spin in circles while rumbling, roaring and trumpeting. This is how elephants show joy.

  As I imagined this, the flying saucer got lower and lower. Dr. Barrett said quietly, ‘Excellent, Phin. You’re doing it. See how calm and relaxed your body is?’

  I nodded my head. I was starting to imagine baboons drinking and playing in the water and I wanted Dr. Barrett to be quiet so I could keep the image.

  Dr Barrett said, ‘You’ve almost landed the spaceship. You are calm and relaxed. Very good.’

  After a few more minutes, Dr. Barrett said, ‘Excellent, Phin! You did that really quickly. Now, what I’d like you to pay attention to is how relaxed your body and breathing are. And whenever you’re upset, try to get back to this bodily state again, okay?’

  ‘That may be difficult.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of what makes me upset.’

  ‘Which is worrying about animals, right? Well, when you worry about animals, just think of what you were thinking this afternoon and bring back that feeling of calmness …’

  ‘That likely won’t help,’ I said. ‘Because I was thinking about Pete’s Pond in Africa. I want to do work like Pete does, but you won’t let me learn the things I need to know.’

  Dr. Barrett didn’t say anything for a minute and then he said, ‘Phin, I know this seems confusing for you right now, but next week when you come in we’ll talk more about why your mother and I think that not watching the Green Channel is for the best right now. Can you trust me on this and we’ll talk about it more next week?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  Then after a few moments, Dr. Barrett said, ‘We’ll talk more about this next week, okay, Phin? I’m really proud of how quickly you caught on to the relaxation exercise. That kind of exercise can really help make you feel better. And that’s what your mom and I really want for you – to feel better. I’m going to lend you the little device we used here today to practice making your body feel calmer. Can you practice that for me every day until I see you next?’

  He wants me to not worry at the very time I should be most worried – when I don’t know what the crap’s going on in the world.

  Today at school Bird got in big trouble. He put his tongue in the cheek of his mouth and tried to say, ‘Get the puck off the ice’ – only it didn’t sound like puck. He said it about six times louder than loud. Mrs. Wardman heard him. He had to explain for a long, long time what he was trying to say.

  I could tell that Mrs. Wardman didn’t believe what Bird was saying. Her eyebrows were low and her lips were closed together and her nostrils were bigger than usual. She looked like the gorilla I saw on the Green Channel who was trying to scare away a lion except she didn’t hoot and beat her chest. But she did give Bird one of those misbehaviour forms that his parents have to sign and send back in. Last time Bird got one of those was for saying the names Hugh Jass and Oliver Closov and Mike Hawk. She didn’t believe him when he tried to explain those ones either.

  Before this year I got a misbehaviour only twice. The first time was when I said whatever to a teacher when she told me that I’d have to stay in at recess because I forgot to get my agenda signed to show that I did my homework even though she knew I did all my homework. I thought I had said it quietly enough, but I was wrong and had to go see Mr. Legacie.

  I actually like Principal Legacie. When he’s on lunch-hour duty he often asks me if I have any interesting animal facts to share. I can tell that he’s really interested because he asks questions about what I’ve said instead of just nodding his head and smiling like a lot of people do – including my mother sometimes. One day I told him all about barnacles, which stay attached in the same place for their whole lives. I wasn’t sure if I should tell him about how they make babies since they don’t move around, but I figured I would take a chance with Principal Legacie because I’ve never seen him look shocked or even surprised – I figure that’s because of all the weird stuff he sees every day. So I told him that I read in a book that male barnacles have penises that are four times as long as their bodies and these come out of the shell and search around for a female nearby. Principal Legacie laughed, but then one kid started taking off his pants and he had to go stop him so we didn’t get to talk about it more.

  But all that happened before this year. I have a feeling this will be the year of the misbehaviour for me, just like every year is for Bird. That’s because of what Bird and I are planning for Cuddles.

  At lunch, Bird and I went back to the big apple tree by Mr. Byers’ house and climbed up really high. Usually Bird tests out Mrs. Wardman’s idea that something bad will happen to him if he goes past the place she told him he could go. So far he’s gotten about three math books away from the tree and nothing has happened to him yet.

  When he got past where he was supposed to be and then jumped back, he covered up his footprints by brushing a fir tree branch over the snow and then he threw the branch away. He said that if the Crime Scene Investigation Unit came to the school to see who had been going past the line, they wouldn’t be able to tell because all they’d see were the tree branch marks. The tree branch wouldn’t have any fingerprints on it because he was wearing wool mittens. They might find traces of wool on the branch but that wouldn’t help them much since many of the other kids have wool mitts too.

  I told Bird that there might be eyewitnesses who saw me and him by the tree and that could lead to us being interviewed as suspects. But Bird said they wouldn’t be able to hold us if they didn’t have any evidence so he thinks we’re out of the woods, but really we were in the woods.

  I told Bird that they might be able to match up the wool they find on the tree branch with the wool on his mittens because no two pairs of mittens would be exactly the same. Bird said that if the CSIs show up at the school, he’ll hide the mitts somewhere and put on his spare pair.

  I said, ‘But where would you hide them on such short notice?’ And he said he would just put them in some other kid’s pocket. I told him to put them in Lyle’s. But then I told Bird that flakes of his skin would be in the mittens and that the skin would be his DNA and not Lyle’s. He said, ‘Oh.’ I think Bird has decided to take his chances.

  Today Bird didn’t try getting more than three books away from the line because he wasn’t himself. He was worrying about taking his misbehaviour form home to his
parents. His father said that the next time he got one, he would be in big, big trouble. Bird said that usually means that he won’t get to play his Game Boy for a whole week and sometimes that means no TV too. But usually it just means no Game Boy because when there’s a no-TV rule, Bird follows his mother around the house talking until his mother tells him he can watch TV. She said to Bird’s father that when Bird does something bad, she shouldn’t be punished too.

  I told Bird that I can’t watch my favourite programs and I didn’t even get a misbehaviour form. I just worry too much about animals going extinct and the earth being ruined.

  He said, ‘You got punished just for worrying about stuff?’

  And I said, ‘Yes.’

  He said, ‘That’s too weird!’

  And I said, ‘Tell that to my mother.’

  Bird and I have been talking a lot about Cuddles. When we first met him in that aquarium, Bird thought it was pretty cool to have a pet frog. But then I asked him how he’d feel if he were stuck in an aquarium with a bunch of ugly faces staring in at him. I told him about how pets aren’t really pets if they don’t want to be with you and how sad Cuddles must be to be here on the other side of the world from where his species is. I told him how frogs are disappearing off the face of the earth and how we need to free Cuddles and put him back in his natural environment in Australia. Now Bird agrees.

  We have been trying to think up a plan. We don’t have all the details worked out yet but it goes something like this: at the end of a school day, I pretend to zipper my jacket right by Cuddles’ aquarium while Bird goes up to Mrs. Wardman and asks questions to distract her. Then I reach in, grab him and put him in my pocket and take him home. What to do next is the difficult part – what do we do with Cuddles after we rescue him? One idea is to give him to my dad to take with him to Australia. But the problem is, my dad is in Scotland right now. When he comes home next, I don’t know where he’s going – and neither does he because he can’t predict what bad thing will happen and where. He’s prepared for just about any bad thing, though, because he has taken hostile-environment courses. Come to think of it, kids like me should take those courses too.

  So then we thought about mailing Cuddles back to Australia, but who would we get to let him out of his box when he got there? And would it take too long? I read that some desert frogs can live months and sometimes years without food and water, but I can’t find that information on White’s tree frogs. Another worry is that he would be bounced around too much in the package. I saw on TV that shaking a baby too much can burst blood vessels in its brain and give it shaken baby syndrome. Is there shaken frog syndrome?

  We got a chance to answer some of these questions after lunch today when we had a technology class. We got to use the computers and Bird is my computer buddy. We were supposed to be looking up information on hurricanes for our science project, but when Mr. Sears wasn’t looking, I typed in frog rescue on the internet. I found a site called the Frog and Tadpole Rescue Group, which is a group of people in Australia who save frogs. Sometimes frogs are mistakenly packed in food crates and building-supply boxes and shipped to other parts of Australia. If you find a frog in your bananas or fruit salad, you call the frog team and they rescue him.

  I was almost finished reading the first page when Bird whispered, ‘Hurry! Get off the frog site – here comes Mr. Sears!’

  So I wrote down the phone number really quickly and then Bird clicked the backwards arrow twice so that we were back on the hurricane page.

  Mr. Sears stopped at our computer and said, ‘How are you boys doing?’

  And Bird said, ‘Those hurricanes can be really big, eh, Mr. Sears?’

  And Mr. Sears said, ‘What else have you learned so far?’

  And Bird said, ‘They’re very windy.’

  Mr. Sears said, ‘Boys, I suggest you read some more.’ Then he walked on to the next computer buddies.

  Bird said, ‘Phew, that was a close one!’

  And I said, ‘Hurricanes are windy? Geez, Bird, of course they’re windy – they’re hurricanes!’ But then I told Bird thanks because he had saved us from getting a misbehaviour, or at least a growling.

  I put the frog-rescue phone number in my shirt pocket. I am going to call them. I am hoping they will have some ideas about how to save Cuddles.

  My mother and I drove to my Grammie’s first thing this morning. My grandmother lives in the country an hour away from my house. There’s a real forest in her backyard and she lives only five minutes away from a river and only fifteen minutes away from the ocean. She lives in a perfect place – except that she’s not very far away from an oil refinery that blasts pollution into the air twenty-four hours a day every day. This is something that Grammie is upset about. Because she used to work as a biologist, she gets on the news a lot to talk about it. Lung cancer killed my grandfather and he didn’t even smoke.

  On the way to Grammie’s, I counted all the graveyards I could see. Last time I counted twenty-eight, and I told my mother I wanted to break that record. I asked if she could please slow down when we went through the villages.

  ‘Phin, do you really think there have been more graveyards added since the last time we visited Grammie?’

  ‘No, but I may have missed some last time.’

  ‘Oh, okay, keep your eyes open, you don’t want to miss those dead people.’

  I watched really closely and then when I was up to a count of eighteen, I spotted one in behind a church that looked like an ordinary house that I don’t think I saw last time. I was starting to feel like I might break my old record.

  ‘Mom, I just saw one I didn’t see before!’

  ‘That’s wonderful, Phin. How many dead people do you think are in there?’

  ‘There look to be about fifty gravestones. But sometimes there is just one gravestone for more than one person. So there’s no way of knowing for sure – unless we dig up the whole graveyard.’

  ‘The answer is all of them. They’re all dead, silly!’ And then she laughed. That was a good joke.

  My mom laughs a lot. I like watching animals laugh on TV. When chimps play and chase each other, they pant laugh and their faces look a lot like human faces laughing. When a gorilla tickles another gorilla, the one who’s being tickled makes a laughing face. Dogs make that face too. And rats chirp when they play and it sounds like giggling. When the scientists on the show tickled the rats, they chirped happily and wanted to be tickled some more. But other scientists still think that only humans can laugh. I think that’s because the animals they’re keeping in their cages for experiments are not laughing – not one little bit.

  By the time I got to Grammie’s, I had spotted thirty graveyards, which broke my record.

  When we got to Grammie’s, she grabbed me and hugged me. She smells like the lavender she grows in the summer because she makes oils and lotions and bath balls from it. Last summer I helped her cut off all the lavender and hang it upside down in her garden shed. Then a few weeks after that I helped her make the bath balls. We broke up the lavender flowers into smaller pieces and then we mixed up sea salt in a blender and added baking soda, cornstarch and eggs and then the lavender. Then we made the mixture into balls and baked them in the oven. When you put a lavender ball in the bathtub, it dissolves and little bits of lavender float around. It smells really good, like my grandmother did when she hugged me.

  We all went into Grammie’s kitchen and talked and had some tea and biscuits. Mostly my mom doesn’t let me drink tea, but when we’re at Grammie’s she does. I chose lemon ginger tea and put lots of honey in it to make it sweet.

  When Mom went to my grandfather’s den to make some important calls, Grammie asked to see what I’d been doing on Reull. I ran out to the car and got my box and showed her. She loved my story of the Ozie and the Oster. We talked about how plants, like the Ozie, actually help clean the earth.

  Grammie knows a lot about plants because that’s what she used to study when she worked as a biologist. She s
ays the work she did then is the reason she’s now an organic gardener. She found out things like that dogs whose owners use pesticides are more likely to die of bladder cancer. So to get rid of bugs like aphids, she just sprays them off with the garden hose on full blast instead of using poisons. She said that once they’re on the ground, they often can’t crawl back up.

  I looked up aphids in my bug books and learned that aphids can be of the winged kind or the unwinged kind. The kind that are in the garden are usually unwinged, but if a plant gets too crowded, all of a sudden winged aphids start to be born and they fly off to other plants.

  I mentioned that to my grandmother and it was something she didn’t know about aphids – and she knows a lot about bugs and plants. I felt happy to tell her something she didn’t know. She said, ‘Well, soon humans had better start producing the winged variety too.’ She was making a joke, but I think it was only a half-joke.

  Just before supper, my uncle John got home from work. When he saw me, he said, ‘Hey, little man, long time, no see.’ He messed up my hair and said that I’d grown a foot. He says that every time he sees me because when I was three I looked down to see if I had actually grown another foot. He still talks about that, which is kind of irritating.

  Uncle John works at a factory that makes potato chips. Sometimes the equipment doesn’t work right and makes weird-looking chips. He brought home one that is shaped like the Loch Ness monster and another one that looks like a bus. He has another that he says looks like something I’ll see when I get older, but he won’t tell me what. He framed those three chips and hung them on his bedroom wall.

  My mother says Uncle John needs to get a life.