A frog jumped out of the broom closet; the wife was already screaming; and the husband burst into the kitchen, squeezed the trigger of his face. In the time it took the morning light to stream through a little window above the sink, the husband scooped the frog off the floor and flung it into the garbage disposal. Two and a half pints of children started to melt. The wife pictured an Appalachian mountainside covered with a beard of trees. The frog’s last testament sounded like the pulverizing of a plastic station wagon. Until the family made absolutely certain that they were not the frog, nobody moved a muscle.
