MUM! .. there's a FROG in my bed ..

thankfully this won't be shrieked down the stairs at me ..
MUCH shrieking this morning! to rival that of tutor on Monday with the MOUSE ..

Our rather splendid cat, Bertie, who isn't normally up to much in the hunting department beyond flies, wasps and the occasional butterfly, managed to catch and drag upstairs a HUGE FROG!

I'm stood in the kitchen doing dishes and pondering how to make "sausage and chips" sound like a planned meal and not a this is all we have LEFT to the family tonight when I hear this SHRIEKING.

I immediately think of Lilly and suspect she's in trouble and/or has caught a baby bird. but no. she's outside pondering about and looking surprised ..

Ignore the shrieking.
Finish the dishes, discover a tin that has a label missing and try to remember IF dh had said no.2.son had it for homework and to remember that the contents were "baked beans" or did he say "kidney beans" ..
more shrieking this time I can't ignore it as its more like SCREAMING!

RUSH up the stairs and find BERTIE trying to clambour up the bunk bed ladders with "something" gripped in his mouth waving arms and legs and SCREECHING!
it was HORRIBLE!
it was like a NIGHTMARE!
I could SEE it wasn't a baby bird!
The noise it was making was odd and sounded like a baby!
IMMEDIATELY I panicked as I got closer and discovered it looked a bit green and thought "my GOD! he's gone and caught the MMG!!! and now he's EATING THE MMG!"

(note to blog-readers other than those off Delphi forums: the MMG is the Miserable Martian Gremlin that resides in my pc but occasionally travels to other areas mostly my sewing machine to visit Mrs MMG but has been known to poke his long pointy fingers at the lads' pc! and was last seen IN the lads' pc messing about with virus protection)

I wondered. for a moment. whether I should fling open the window and hurl the cat AND the "thing" out of the window, shut it and pretend it never happened .. but that would mean getting close to the "thing" which, thankfully, Bertie dropped! (in order to screech at me at how WONDERFUL he was and how MUCH my son was going to LOVE this particular prized treasure he was clearly intent on burying IN his duvet ..)

and I saw! it was a FROG! still alive and very panicked!
(me. panicked. I mean. the frog I think was just struck frozen with fear!)

now.
the last time I picked up a frog I was about 5yrs I think. and I'd found one in our garden and took it in to show Dad. who was on the phone. and didn't want to look. so I put it in the washing up bowl and forgot all about it. until Dad finished his phone call. came back to finish the washing up and FOUND IT. There was a lot of screeching and panicking and frozen fear then if I remember rightly!).
But I'm not 5yrs and I'm NOT going to TOUCH THIS FROG! A moment of inspiration! I fling a tea towel over it! and fling a bath towel over that! and scoop it up! take it into the garden and carefully unwrap the parcel and find the frog is still frozen with fear but has at least stopped screeching and is apparently breathing.

Of course I had both Bertie AND Lilly milling around at this point and I grasped them both and they are now shut in the house looking accusingly at me and pointedly at the closed patio door and I suspect they are cross with me or at least, puzzled by me!

I shall give it half an hour and hopefully by then the frog will have hopped off to safety!
Had I known owning cats would be this exciting I might not have gone in for TWO ..