Amphibian (4 page)

The article said that this news is not good for human and animal life. This made me worried and scared. My insides, even my heart, felt like they were getting skinnier and skinnier.

I turned off the computer when I heard my mother coming downstairs. She saw me sitting in her office and asked me what I was up to. I told her I was reading about the melting of the permafrost.

She said, ‘Phin, right now you should be getting on your snow pants and boots because there's nothing melting here today – it's minus 21 degrees.'

‘But,' I said, ‘doesn't it worry you that the permafrost is melting? The
perma
frost?'

‘Yes, Phin, sometimes it does, but I don't have time to think about it right now. Now, come on, we have to get going – quick as a bunny!'

She handed me my jacket and snow pants, and I put them on, but what my mom said didn't make any logical sense. If a starving grizzly bear walked up to a person having a picnic, would it be good for her to say she doesn't have time to be scared because she hasn't finished her sandwich?

When I walked into my classroom this morning, I noticed right away that there were two things out of the ordinary. The first was that Mrs. Wardman's desk was moved over too far to the right at the front of the classroom. I sit in the back row, which has seven desks. The middle row has eight desks and the front row normally has seven. But today it had eight. I counted twice to be sure. Eight.

The other out-of-the-ordinary thing was that there was a lump on the show-and-tell table with a white sheet over it. It looked about the shape of the big box where I keep my Reull drawings.

When everybody sat in their seats, the extra desk was taken up by a kid I had noticed in the hallway hanging up her jacket. I don't
usually pay much attention to girls, but I noticed this one because I had never seen her before. Also because she's a big girl.

Mrs. Wardman went over and stood beside her desk and said, ‘Children, this is Mitty. She's new to our class. Please say hello.' And then we all said, ‘Hello, Mitty.' I felt sorry for and happy about Mitty at the same time. I felt sorry for her because she had a weird name and was also big, which meant that Lyle was bound to give her a hard time. I could already think of a few bad things that rhyme with Mitty, and I knew that even ‘waste of flesh' Lyle, with brain cells for nothing but thinking up really mean things, was bound to think of them sooner or later. Mitty was definitely in for it.

But I felt a bit happy too because having Mitty in the class might take some of the pressure off me and a few of the other kids since Lyle would have someone else to pick on. I felt a little guilty about feeling happy about that – but not guilty enough to stop thinking it. Maybe that's what people mean when they say misery loves company. Maybe when misery is spread out it's not so hard to take. Maybe it's like when we have reading groups and there are five in each group instead of three, which means you don't have to answer Mrs. Wardman's questions as often.

After we said hello to Mitty, we sang ‘O Canada.' Then Mrs. Wardman announced that we were going to gain another new friend in our classroom – a class pet. She said we had to use our logic skills to guess what was under the sheet. I was a little worried when she said that because of the last time we did a logic exercise. She gave us ten minutes to write down what we thought was under there.

I thought nine thoughts:

1. There are only a few animals that are domesticated and would make good companion animals.

2. One is the cat.

3. We can see things eight times smaller than cats can.

4. Another animal that makes a good companion is a dog.

5. It can't be a cat or dog because they would be making noises.

6. A horse could be an animal companion.

7. The show-and-tell table couldn't hold a horse.

8. Some people think pigs make good domesticated companion animals.

9. We shouldn't eat our companions.

But I only wrote one: It is not a cat, a dog, a horse or a pig. I didn't have a guess as to what was under the sheet because I had ruled out all suitable companion animals.

Mrs. Wardman told us to pass in what we had written down. Then she said, ‘Okay, are you ready for the big surprise?' All the kids yelled
yes
and Gordon nearly fell out of his chair because he jumped out of it and then plopped back into it really quickly, which made it tip. Mrs. Wardman told him to be careful because he could fall backwards and split his head wide open.

Then Mrs. Wardman pulled off the sheet slowly and said, ‘It's a … frog! Who guessed a frog?' she asked. Nobody raised a hand. Then she said, ‘Welcome your new class pet, everyone!'

I raised my hand and Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Yes, Phin?' I asked her what kind of frog it was. It looked like a White's tree frog to me but I wasn't absolutely sure. It was smaller than my hand and a greenish turquoise colour, which is what they look like, but White's tree frogs are nocturnal and I doubted that Mrs. Wardman would get a pet that would sleep all day and be awake all night when we weren't even here.

‘It's a White's tree frog,' said Mrs. Wardman.

Mrs. Wardman told us that frogs make excellent pets because they are quiet and don't need a lot of care. I wondered how that makes a pet excellent. Wouldn't a rock be a good pet then too? I only thought this – I didn't say it because Mrs. Wardman would think I was being sarcastic. I wasn't being sarcastic, I was being serious. But I didn't say it anyway.

Next Mrs. Wardman told us that we all got to vote on a name for our class frog. I knew that since this was a White's tree frog, it
was male and not female because he had a greyish throat and females have white throats. Each of us wrote one name on a piece of paper and put it into the voting jar. I wrote
Cuddles
. I meant to be sarcastic that time, but I didn't have to put my name on it so I knew I wouldn't get in trouble for it.

Then Mrs. Wardman went to the jar and asked us what the chances were that our entry would be chosen. Gordon shouted out, ‘One in twenty-three,' and Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Yes, Gordon, you are right, good thinking.'

But both she and Gordon were wrong because I heard Katherine and Amy talking in the row in front of me and I knew that they had both voted for
Kermit
. That would mean that they had a two-in-twenty-three chance of having their name chosen and the rest of us would have a one-in-twenty-three chance but only if there were no others of us who chose the same name as someone else.

Mrs. Wardman put her hand into the jar and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘The name of our class pet toad is … Cuddles!' she said. She smiled and some of the kids clapped and cheered. Mrs. Wardman asked whose name was Cuddles, which I didn't think she'd ask. I raised my hand slowly and she said, ‘Nice name, Phin, congratulations.' Then we opened our readers to page 123.

Nobody seemed to think that was weird – a frog that was quiet, slept all day, didn't need much attention and that you couldn't cuddle called Cuddles. Sometimes sarcasm just doesn't work.

Today at school a kid got in trouble – big trouble. Her name is Jody and she got caught telling other kids that eating breath mints will make them jump higher. The teacher said this is pretending to take drugs and that there's a zero tolerance policy for drugs. After Jody got her misbehaviour, she started crying so hard that her mother had to come get her.

I felt bad for Jody, which made it hard to concentrate on my spelling exercises. The word activities were all about animals. One of the questions was ‘Lions live in the j _ _ _ _ _.'

I raised my hand and Mrs. Wardman came over. I asked her if this was a trick question since there's no J word for savannah. She said, ‘Phin, the answer is jungle. Just write
jungle
down.' Then she walked back to her desk.

I thought about not telling her that lions don't live in the jungle because I could tell she was irritated with me. I knew this mainly because when she told me to write
jungle
, her eyelids fluttered and she took a deep breath.

I thought about it for a few seconds. I remembered what my mother had told me about how maybe I shouldn't point out to Mrs. Wardman that she's wrong when she's wrong. But then I decided that she should know the right answer. She was the teacher and it wouldn't be good if she was teaching everybody the wrong thing for years and years and years. So I raised my hand again.

‘What is it, Phin?' said Mrs. Wardman. She said this from her desk, which made what I had to say a little bit tricky. I didn't want to say it out loud in front of everybody but now that I had raised my hand and she had answered, I had to say something.

‘The answer to question seven can't be jungle,' I said, ‘because lions don't live in the jungle. They live on the grasslands and savannah.'

Then all of a sudden other words popped into my head, but they didn't stay in my head. It was almost like they dropped down out of my brain and into the back of my throat and I had no choice but to spit them out – it was either that or choke. But after they came out, I immediately wanted to grab them from the air, shove them back into my mouth and swallow. But it was too late. The words ‘and frogs shouldn't live in cages, they should live in wetlands' were out into the air making their way to Mrs. Wardman's ears and all I could do was hope for the best.

Mrs. Wardman didn't say anything for a few seconds. She just looked straight at me and then she said in a really low voice with her mouth hardly moving, ‘Phin, then just leave that one out, for pity's sake.' She didn't say a thing about what I said about frogs.

So I left the jungle answer out. I should have known it was going to be a stupid exercise. On the first page there was a picture of a polar bear and a penguin sitting on the same ice floe. On the same ice floe! They live on opposite ends of the world, for pity's sake. Whatever that means.

I couldn't get to sleep last night at all. I tried to. I tried counting sheep. I got to 1,011, but then the sheep started bumping into the fence they were jumping over. I think that was because I was getting a bit tired and couldn't make them jump high enough after about 1,000. When they hit the fence, they would fall down. That didn't make me feel sleepy.

Then I tried to think nice thoughts. I thought of the animals on Reull. I thought of Whirly Eye who has one big eye but also little eyes at the tips of his tentacles so that when he whirls around he can see in all directions. He is never surprised by what may be around a corner because all he does is put out one of his tentacles to look for danger. Whirly Eyes have predators but they're hardly ever caught, not even at night, because the eyes take turns sleeping – half of them sleep during the daytime and half during the night.

That made me think of dolphins here on earth. The left and right sides of a dolphin's brain take turns sleeping so that one part can watch for danger. Whales and seals and manatees do this too but no other mammals do.

There are thirty-five different species in the family
Delphinidae
and five of them are critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable on the Red List of Threatened Species. Most of the others could be in big trouble too but scientists don't have enough information about them to know for sure.

Lots of different species of birds can sleep one half a brain at a time. The eye that is controlled by the part of the brain that is awake stays open and the other one droops closed. If birds sleep together, the brains of the birds at the ends of the rows sleep one
part at a time but both sides of the brains of the birds in the centre sleep because they feel safe.

This thought made me think of feeling safe and then I wondered if Cuddles was feeling safe. I started to worry that he was lonely there in the aquarium cage without any of his species around to listen to. Last summer, my mom and I went to a marsh-mallow roast in the amphibian park where there are three different types of frogs. As it was getting dark, they made a lot of noise. But for Cuddles in his lonely cage in the quiet school there would be nothing for him to see or hear at the very time he's most awake. That made me worried and sad, so I got up to find my mother.

I found her working in her study. She didn't even look up from her computer because she knew it was me behind her. When I was little she told me not to make faces at her, that she had an eye on the back of her head and could see me. I believed her because anableps are fish that have two eyes to see the world above the water and two eyes to see below.

Before I even said a word, my mother sighed. ‘What is it, Phin? Why are you up when I put you to bed over an hour ago? How are you going to do well in school tomorrow if you're tired? Don't you know I have a lot of work to do after I put you to bed? Don't you understand that?'

She said it in her sandpaper voice and she didn't even have her ‘I'm a ticking time bomb' sign around her neck. She sometimes uses that sign to signal to me that I'd better not give her a hard time. I hate it when she asks me a lot of questions in a row because then I have to remember them in order so that I can answer them in order. It's hard to remember after about three or four and it's even harder to answer them all really quickly because most often she doesn't give me time.

I complained to her about this once and she said that some questions are rhetorical, which means that they're asked for a purpose other than to get answers to them. She said for example that asking ‘Why me?' when something bad happens is an expression of emotion more than a question that you want answered.
But when I say ‘Why me?' I usually really am looking for an answer. But mostly I never get one so maybe that makes it rhetorical too.

The problem with rhetorical questions is that I usually don't know which ones are real and which are not. So the answers to my mother's questions were: