THE GREATEST SECOND-CHANCE FROG QUEEN (Part 6)

Don't forget xmas; you've almost read a full stocking-stuffer-worth of Frog-Queen on Substack. To materialize it in solid book form (for the little ones..) click: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QML8BQN

LISTEN TO YOUR ELDERS = WE FROGS!

So, to reiterate, we frogs have been here on ‘your’ planet for around 10 million years. You humans have been around maybe 100,000 years, in a form you’d recognize (vaguely resembling your modern selves). OK, I'll give you existence of maybe 1 million, at least in some humanoid form. When I say a hundred-thousand I may be padding your number a bit, if I must also include members of your species that ran around on all fours, or were at least somewhat scrunched over when walking first on two feet. I don’t want to take too much ego off you, as I try to do some instructing here.

Have you ever heard the expression, “Now listen to me, because I’ve been around “a coon’s age?” How long? Coon's age. Oh, how long is that, exactly? Well, aside from the term now being on the ‘highly offensive’ side of sensitive humans. the fact is, we frogs had that coon or raccoon’s longevity beat by a country mile. Raccoons don’t really have a very good survival rate – around 2-3 years in the wild, compared to maybe 7 or 8 in captivity where food is delivered daily, like in a zoo or living as a pet. I guess it's that robust look of that animal -- thick fur and ‘bandit’ mask marking on the faces -- that made people think the critter was healthier than it ever really was.

In the early/mid-1800s no humans knew (or maybe even cared) how long particular animals lived. They certainly didn’t know us frogs very well either. At any rate, they just intuitively thought (wrongly) that raccoons lived a very long time. And even a political party called “The Whigs” used the ‘coon’ as its animal image, like the donkey for Democrats or elephant for Republicans. By the way, the Whigs faired poorly, only lasting 1830s-1860s. Note: Even Abraham Lincoln was a Whig for awhile. Anyway, it was formed to oppose the presidency of Andrew Jackson (in the White House 1829-37), and was against his ‘Indian removal’ program.

The history of Whigs in America is fascinating and shows the turmoil as various factions of the country battled politically against other humans who had differing interests, among them anti-slavery. The materials I read about Whigs, with my bulging frog eyes (not so easy to do), explained that they basically wanted a “Jeffersonian tradition of compromise, balance in government, territorial expansion, a Federal Transportation network and domestic manufacturing.” They were responsible in creating public schools, private colleges, charities and cultural institutions.

Where was I? Oh yeah. I started out discussing the term ‘coon’s age,’ And I wanted to get into its use as a racist word for humans of black skin. ‘Coon’ is what black humans were called by whites, dating back to the 1800s, as slavery accelerated in America. By the time of the Civil War, 1860, the number of slaves in the country was close to 4,000,000 (four million!), about 13% of the entire population of the US!

Now most humans are aware of “racism,” meaning that some human races have a different look or color; white, to black, to yellow, brown, in varying shades and tints, Some shades are classified as ‘inferior’ to the majority, depending on where you live. It would be as if the brightly colored yellow tree frog with its bullying red eyes, thought that the just-plain-green frog was of a lesser frog, something to be shunned, even deprived of lily-sitting time, or prime bug- feasting on the gently flowing banks of waterways.

This kind of odd shooting-itself-in-the-foot racism human behavior has continued in human cities right up to present, and it has created a backlash of negativity, huge expenses in policing, and a gigantatistic loss of basic goods and services. The devastation caused by this human flaw – to not see each and every human person as brother as we frogs do – required I made up a new word to try and describe it.

Just in terms of lost revenues (I’m talking money here...), makes this lingering human failure mucho ridiculous, with people under fed, under housed, under employed around our precious globe you call earth. This topic is disturbing to me. I feel I can talk until I’m blue in the face and nothing will change. Racism is ridiculous. Humans are, and have been, a cruel and senseless lot. Please stop it.

The human species is young, as I pointed out earlier. Frogs had 10,000,000 years for developing. What we frogs did was to keep a low profile. And we operated with an abundance of food. With insects as our main diet we had it made. If you can imagine 200,000,000 insects for every human on the planet, that should give you an idea of our impressive source of food. We have about 4700 different species of frogs to feed around the world, but we are declining, so say the human scientists.

That dread disease that I formerly mentioned -– Chytridiomycosis — is a disease caused by the fungal chytrid pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. And it is really cutting into our population. Please let this little spiel be a plea for you humans to figure out a cure for us. We may be older and wiser (and cuter!), but in this case we’re suddenly in a compromised and begging situation. Because we breathe through our skin we have almost no tolerance for pollutants. We’re in the front line of your battles against such offenders. Industry can’t be allowed to operate over the needs of frogs!

Global warming is another threat to our survival. We’re losing some of our rare species every year. And some think of us now as ‘a canary in a cage’ in the mines, since we are more sensitive to the world-wide problems of the new millennium. Hate to admit that we are so vital to the food chain (no one wants to be regularly eaten!) but that’s the case. You eat us as ‘frog’s legs’ in the finest restaurants (close to 5000 tons per year), but you soon won’t have us around if the disease isn’t cured.

And look at the relationships. Tadpoles eat algae, which reduces the rate of natural eutrophication (too much nutrients in water). And insect populations are well controlled by frogs. We devour tons of insects in every part of the globe. (You’re welcome!).

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OK! That’a a mouthful for now, in anyone’s book. There’s just one more next posting (Part-7) to give U humans some understanding of how to get out of your current jam. I may not be your Queen, but U need someone in charge who has 1/2 a brain. Good luck on locating that person (and getting her elected!). Things are spiraling away from using simple solutions on complex human problems.

Coming up are topics like "rivet hypothesis," survival-connections inter-related between frogs & humans: <http://amphibianrescue.org/>), and secrets of how us frogs survived so long (even through when the asteroid wiped out all the dinosaurs). So we’ll wrap up this frog-talk tomorrow––Dec. 7th, two thousand and twenty-three––after almost 2023 years of pretty much non-stop earth

wars and aggression between human tribes and countries. Will it ever end?