Gaiety
Published on April 13, 2009
As in:
Amphibians were, as we’ve noted, doing very well in the Turtleback Hills in the time of Solomon–as in our young tadpole, Solomon Kepple. The frog scholars who studied these things would eventually partition the era into five distinct periods of prosperity, adaption, propagation, contraction and reorganization and Solomon was fortunate enough to arrive between phases one and two. He was thus riding the wave of fertility and hope amongst the frogs and there was a gaiety and frivolity that some would compare to western human civilization during the disco years. You would notice this in their songs, what with higher octaves, pointless refrains, and lyrics that just seemed like undulating empty calories.
The only downside to the upwelling in numbers and cheer was that predators caught on. A migrating crane or patrolling heron would almost shiver with delight to look down in the Turtlebacks and spot a slick of tadpoles being pushed by its very numbers out into bays and inlets. Snakes coming upon the scene would gorge themselves to a point they would have to rest for days before there was any revival of interest in swimming or eating.
These feeding frenzies were difficult to experience and explain. You’d hesitate, even as a frog, to assign such events to God’s will but that, by itself, hardly dampened the demand for some sort of existential equation that could make sense of it. Otherwise, you’d be left to think that there was no fair explanation for why one tadpole got eaten and another, only a few inches away, was spared to actually grow into something substantial, like a frog.
It was about that time that the frogs of the Turtlebacks developed writing. It was borne of necessity. It was so frustrating for frogs to hear an explanation that made sense at the time, but was then hard or impossible to remember because nobody had written it down. So even as Solomon wriggled toward conscientiousness, writing was being perfected amongst the frogs of the Turtlebacks and was quickly gaining in stature. I mean, to be sure, the young frogs who could nail a small grasshopper for a meal (and share) or snap down a house fly with a flicker of the elongated tongue, yea, those were the frogs who had no trouble competing for a mate. But now writing frogs were in the game too. A frog love letter, coiled within the mother of pearl walls of a snail shell, could be an impressive thing, especially for the ladies who grew tired of suitors too eager to show off their tongues.