The Hindu Business Line : Our bookish frog

A frog has been hiding in plain sight for the past two days between my copy of R.K. Narayan’s biography and a stack of novels. I don’t know what it’s doing on the bookshelves. It should be down near my feet, where the mosquitoes are. But I’m glad to have it out of the kitchen on any terms. It will also reinforce the small troop of lizards around our computer desk. A gorgeous jewel lizard hangs out near the plug point, and a pale gecko basks in the w armth radiating from the UPS. Some months ago, when a lizard entered the CPU and shorted it out, we barricaded it against future invasions using plastic mesh cut out from a tea strainer. We don’t take stronger measures against them. If it weren’t for these obligingly hungry friends, the ants and wood lice would long ago have reduced us and our equipment to fine, nutrient-rich topsoil.

It’s also a relief, when I’m struggling to untangle a sentence on genetically modified rice, to puzzle instead over why a lizard’s tail stripes are sometimes straight and sometimes V-shaped. Or watch a gecko chase his mate over the printer before clamping his jaws on her neck. Or gaze at the round eggs clearly visible inside a lizard that has become translucent against the setting sun.

The lizards follow a strict schedule. One of them slips behind a framed appliqué on the wall every afternoon at 2.45. The fridge lizard always comes out from under the fridge after dinner. Two or three of them play around the tube light above the kitchen sink, and every night at ten, when I am watching TV, I hear one splat to the floor.

We also have larger wildlife on our acre and a half here in Akathethara Panchayat, about 5 km from Palakkad. One night I heard rustling under our bedroom window and saw a porcupine, probably grubbing for fallen cashew fruit. Saar still regrets I didn’t wake him up to see it, but it had waddled away before I quite understood what I had seen. The tortoises hang out near the pond and, as the water dries out, they hide in a collapsed well further downhill. A hare bounds out of the tall grass in the afternoons. It is very large, perhaps a descendant of an escaped domesticated Australian hybrid, bred to be extra fat.

The animals we see most often are not the shy ones. Near the end of the rainy season, our verandah and shoe cupboard are full of toads. When I shake a toad out of my canvas shoe and try to put my foot in, four or five more wriggle out. Rather off-putting, but the main problem with the toads is the snake that comes to hunt them.

Rat snakes, which usually scoot at the smell of us, become fearless when they are hunting. One day we watched from the window as a smallish rat snake got its jaw around a toad on the verandah. The toad was too large to begin with, and it had puffed itself up. After a long struggle, and much chomping, the snake gave up, stretched its jaws, and went home. It was as good as watching National Geographic, except that we had to mop up the toad afterwards.

Now it’s the quiet season. There is nothing more in the house than a praying mantis or grasshopper, the house lizards, and the occasional frog. The protocol for handling a frog is that we trap it in a mug and evict it, but some of them are apparently smart enough to wedge themselves between books.

Our bookish frog is opening and closing its mouth repeatedly, though it doesn’t seem to be eating. I call Saar over to come and look instead of watching centipedes and rats fighting on Animal Planet. This frog, I tell him, looks as if it’s trying to say something. Give it a kiss, he says, it might be a prince.

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