September 12, 2007

• The Gentle Pink Giant

  Last night, in one of those delightful after-nine, off-peak phone conversations that keep our relationship alive and well, I was relating to my husband my latest concerns about Jumbo, the largest of the tadpoles at Rana Ranch, the only one as yet showing significant development toward froghood.  Greyfox always gets a laugh out of my activities with the tadpole ranch.  His amusement contains not a hint of ridicule.  While I cannot imagine him ever rescuing a bucketful of frogspawn and attempting to nurture a herd of tadpoles to adulthood, he is amused and bemused at what he terms my whimsical behavior, and I enjoy hearing his laughter.

  I explained that on several occasions I had scooped Jumbo into my hand for closer inspection because it is hard to see details as he swims around in the North 40, camouflaged against the background of sediment in the pan.

  A few days ago, when I had asked my son, Doug, to follow me out with the camera and capture an image of Jumbo floating in my cupped hands,  I noticed that the tadpole no longer fled from my hands as he had previously.  Then, after I released him, Jumbo uncharacteristically hung at the surface for a while, instead of returning to his usual haunts at the bottom of the pan.  I reached in with a finger and gently tickled the tadpole on his belly, and he smoothly swam down to the slimy rock below and started sucking up algae.  His movements were leisurely, very slow compared to those of the smaller tads in the pan, and compared to his own past behavior.  Doug said maybe he had been stunned by the photo session.

  I considered that idea, and felt some concern at the thought that my interest in his (or her – how to tell?) development, and my attempts to document it, might be harmful or even traumatic to him.  I also felt it was possible that through familiarity the little froglet had come to trust me, or at least to accept me as a benign part of its environment.  As I related the story and my concerns to Greyfox last night, he broke in with, “You’re the Gentle Pink Giant.  Generations of frogs will pass along the legend of the Gentle Pink Giant….”
  
  I cracked up.  I laughed so hard it hurt.  I started coughing, lost my breath, and had to grab the nebulizer. (I’m still hosting a respiratory virus.)  When I recovered my voice enough to say, “Ow!  That hurt,” he replied, “That’s too bad.  I was just working up a riff on the topic….”

  I caught my breath, composed myself, and begged him to go ahead.  “Laughter is therapeutic,” I said.  So he riffed a while on the Gentle Pink Giant:

  Two little frogs were arguing.  The littler one complained, “Mommie, Johnny says there is no such thing as the Gentle Pink Giant, that it’s just a story.”

  “Don’t you worry, Timmy,” the mother frog said.  “There really was a Gentle Pink Giant.  Grandpa Jumbo grew up in the giant’s ranch, far from our muskeg here, and the Gentle Pink Giant was his friend.”

  That’s the gist of the story.  There was a little more, and it suffers on the page from the lack of vocal expression and intonation.  Even so, my cheeks have started aching from my grin as I have been writing this.  The Gentle Pink Giant — that’s me.

  

  • 1:09 pm
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