point / counterpoint

It's been wet & windy over the past few weeks, which means, because it's also summer, that the pool ends up full of orange & white & red &, especially, yellow flowers.

I also have the occasional sad task of scooping drowned frogs out of the pool. They're not the usual green tree frogs that are constant residents of our garden & porches & are quite content to accept—ignore?—your presence near them. These are Striped Burrowing Frogs, skittish but groovy little hopper/boppers that live underground in a coccoon & emerge when there's been a bit of rain. A few nights ago, there were about 50 of them pogoing around the back patio where I sit & smoke. The number has decreased since then, but there are still a few about.

Today, when I went to clean the pool, there were two of them swimming around, unable to get out because they couldn't get sufficient purchase on the surface of the water to spring to safety. So I scooped them up & rescued them. Good guy points, 2.

But my Buddhist nature only goes so far. The same rain & warmth that brings out the frogs also brings out the mosquitoes. Several varieties—big, small, soft, sharp, designed all razor-edged like military machines. All after my blood. There's more than a bit of paranoia attached to them. Think vectors of disease. Think malaria, leishmania, Ross River fever; & now cases of Dengue fever have been reported 300 kilometers away, several hundred kilometers south of what used to be the limits of its occurence.

So, whack, whack, whack, whack, ad infinitum. Blood—my blood!—smears my arms & legs. To hell with Buddhism. Death to the beasties. Bad boy points, 100.

(Photo by Donna Flynn reproduced under a Creative Commons license.)