It's Not Easy Being Green
At the pond, my brother and I witness the circle of life
Growing up in the 1970s, I owned and used lots of orange and purple stuff. If the hippies didn’t invent purple, they wore it a lot. My little brother was inseparable from his day-glow orange boots, which he wore all summer. Crossing a stream or splashing in a puddle, he was ready.
It was unfortunate, that in 1976 Britain was hit by such a bad drought, that our Government decreed shallow baths and recycling that water for plants. With pipes trailing out of upstairs windows, gardeners like my dad were harvesting bumper crops of tomatoes, gooseberries and beans. As kids, all we cared about was that every day was sunny. We planned picnics and built camps that, for once, weren’t ruined by rain.
“Can we see the tadpoles?”
My brother’s suggestion was great, I was equally fascinated with watching the jelly-like frogspawn become creatures with eyes, body and tail. He wasn’t allowed near the pond without supervision; I was older with a water safety badge.
“Why not?” I dressed in what became my uniform that summer, a swimsuit under a t-shirt and canvas shoes.
As we left the house, my brother snagged binoculars and a magnifying glass from his spy kit. The kit had been a raffle prize. Elements of that kit went everywhere with him, ditto the luminous orange boots.
We approached the pond quietly. Its shady presence evoked calm, it was a space for nature to do its thing, we were just visitors. The water level was diminishing and gnats hovered over its green surface.
“Wow!” my brother goggled at the tadpoles. “They have legs now, as well as tails.”
He lay on his front, using his magnifying glass as they wriggled busily in the murky water. He was totally absorbed by the transformation of their tiny bodies.
“What do tadpoles eat?” he asked.
“The algae,” I pointed to the stuff floating on the surface. “Then they grow into frogs and eat insects.”
“Like Mr Jeremy Fisher,” my brother liked Beatrix Potter’s books with drawings of animals dressed in clothes.
I was trying to remember more pond facts, when a full-grown frog, bright green with a pulsing throat, hopped nearby.
“Yikes!” I was startled by its sudden arrival.
The amphibian didn’t hang around. It sprang away, landing near my brother’s feet. Another impossible leap and the frog cleared his boots, disappeared into the undergrowth, and was gone.
“Did you see …” But I never finished that sentence. In hot pursuit of the frog came a grass snake.
It was a dull green, to blend with grass and leaves. I experienced a tickle of fear from its writhing motion. Grass snakes are harmless in terms of bite, that didn’t mean I wanted to be close to one.
“Yikes!” I said with more alarm.
The snake slithered menacingly after the frog, travelling up and over my brother’s boot, then vanished. Echoing the snake and the frog’s speed, my brother and I left that pond lickety-spit.
This story is fictionalized — which means it really happened, but elements have been changed to make the re-telling fit the prompt. I entered it in 2024 for the Australian Writers’ Centre Furious Fiction monthly challenge, flash fiction 500 words or less.
The story was required to have a CHILD (16 or younger) as its main character.
First sentence had to contain two colours.
Story to include the words BUMPER, PRIZE and IMPOSSIBLE.
Very cool. I used to catch frogs at primary school and bring them home in my pocket! My mum loved it!🤣🤣🤣. I was much older before I saw a grass snake, though.
Very cute story!!! Love those orange boots!!