Over the Fence

The pool was old, deep, made of cement and covered in cracks. Tiles were missing, caulk was abundant. It sat in the ground of a deck surrounded by trees. Whoever had built it there, decades ago, must have not built very many pools. Leaves, branches, any and every forest debris found itself in the water. The cleaning was constant, and a chore.

After a storm the filters would be stuffed with leaves. That was the situation that day. Clumps of wet and muddy foliage, sticks and bugs, waterlogged critters. On a good day the water would spin, pass the chlorine tablets, get sucked through the basket. On a day like that nothing would move and it would have to be cleaned out. I opened the cover to the mess inside, and I saw the frog.

I scooped him out. He was lucky, he was still alive. Usually when frogs were found their bellies would be bloated, their legs outstretched, giving them the frozen look of taking a breath and then leaping. But this one was breathing, blinking, just. He must have been in their for hours, caught, spinning and spinning and gradually, gradually slowing down. I rested him on the cement. I didn't want to take him to the woods, to some shrub behind a rock. I thought he might prefer this, the chance to sit on dry land, catch his breath, think about how he could learn from this and how to move on. I thought he'd prefer it.

I dumped out the basket, put in another chlorine tablet, and got to skimming. The water was decorated with white fuzz, ants, seeds. I always found the skimming relaxing. It gave me a chance to think, to take my time. I would see how much I could get in the net before I had to dump it over the fence. And that's what I was doing when I felt the soft crunch under my sandle.

My eyes shut. I dropped the skimmer into the water. I knew what I'd done but I looked. The frog wasn't entirely flattened, I'd stopped before it could get that far. But whether or not he was dead I couldn't tell. Had I forgotten him already? I picked him up, gently, and threw him over the fence, hard as I could at the biggest tree trunk I could see. And of course I don't know if the impact killed him. But I hope so.