Friday Fiction: The Stump of a Story

 

     In a stump by the pond lives a frog. I will come clean with you right away: I am that frog, and my name is Goggle B. Burpee. My great-great-grandmother was one of the Founding Frogs of the Stump. I mention this fact not to brag about it, but there are families here who seem to think such things lend them some kind of distinction, though they may do as little as bumps on said stump. I tell you it simply as a fact, and to show you I have been comfortably settled for some time. It is not my fault or through any virtue I or my family may possess that I am constantly called upon when the Stump faces a crisis, or an adventure raises its ugly head. But here I am.

     Now, the Stump isn't one of those broad flat affairs you get when humans come around with their sharp axes and long saws. It was a fat old mulberry tree at least a hundred years old when it got struck by lightning, breaking it off at about five feet from the roots. The crown was swept away by the resulting flood, leaving a jagged, tessalated top. The stump was left behind, half-dead. It was in the aftermath of this that the Founding Frogs took up residence and began hollowing out chambers, along with the help of a few toads, newts, and lizards, and the Stump as we know it today truly began. Being half-alive, the Stump eventually sprouted a new, squat crown of leafy branches that still bears berries, which, besides providing a delicious crop, attract many of the herd bugs eaten at our tables today. 

Notes

Having mentioned Goggle yesterday, I thought I might as well post this fragment I came up with when I tried my hand at writing about the 'mythos'. As you can see, I never got very far. Perhaps I started with too much explaining. The first picture is an illustration from the Batrachomyomachia, a 'Homeric fable' parodying the war between the Greeks and Trojans.