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One More Night with the Frogs
by Barbie Kusserow, Niger
10 March 2005

Tim had already been sick for a couple of weeks when we arrived from the remote town of Mainé-Soroa where we live to the capital city of Niamey in Niger, West Africa. We were very grateful for our rooms at the SIM guesthouse, and slept like logs that first night. Somewhere in the dead of the second night, however, the toads erupted with their incredibly loud, grating honks right under our bedroom window. We lay awake for hours, unable to tune them out.

The next evening, Tim and the kids gathered up a bucketful of slimy toads from the puddle created by a leaking pipe under our window. They collected 17 of the little beasts and released them on the bank of the Niger River. We slept well for a couple of nights.

Then came a night when the familiar honk roused me at 1:30 a.m.! Tim was still exhausted. I could think of only one thing to do. Getting dressed, I grabbed the flashlight and a bucket, and let myself out the kitchen door.

Now, I have never wanted to pick up a toad in my life, so when I saw the first toad, I turned the bucket on its side and pushed the toad in with my flashlight. Then I stared at the two or three other toads who glared balefully at me in the light of my flashlight. I picked one out and pounced, pinning the creature to the ground with my fingers on its back. The monster hunkered deeper into the puddle and closed its eyes. The back that I touched was hard like a piece of bark, and I couldn't grab it, so I slowly widened my grip till my fingers sank into its soft sides. It was like picking up an overripe, squishy tomato, fearing that at any moment the skin would burst and the insides would come squirting out. I dropped the splay-legged thing in the bucket, then turned away, utterly repulsed.

After a moment's reflection I turned back to my task. There was no point getting only a couple of them. So I returned to the puddle. Pounce. Squish. Drop. Pounce. Squish. Drop. Finally I could find no more toads. I left the bucket with the lid on outside the kitchen door and went to bed. Next morning when the kids carried them far away to release them, they counted thirteen.

When Moses and Aaron asked Pharaoh when to remove the frogs from Egypt, instead of saying "Now!" he said, "Tomorrow." (Exodus 8:9,10) Apparently he wanted to spend one more night with the frogs.

There are things in our lives like frogs (or toads) that we don't need to leave for tomorrow!


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