Frogs

My father is having an issue with frogs.

It's not the first time. When I was eleven years old I accidentally told the French section of my family that my dad had a habit of calling them "the froggies" when they weren't in the room, and all hell broke loose. The froggies - namely my female cousins - went berserk, threw roast potatoes, started crying and stomped upstairs, screaming then you are all le roast boeufs; my dad looked sheepish, my sister put her napkin in her mouth so she wouldn't start laughing and I got it in the neck for ruining yet another Christmas dinner.

Now the frogs are causing problems again. Except that this time it's the small, green, hoppy versions, instead of the ones who live on the other side of the English channel.

We have a pond in my garden at home in England. For the first twenty years of living there, it was Pond by name only: consisting of a shallow dip of concrete, filled with rain water. Then my dad got all Home Improvements and had it made into what he calls a Proper Pond, with an embarrassing naked lady made of stone and pivoted - diving - on a metal spike, water spurting between two stones, a pump, plants that regulate oxygen supplies and four fish (one for each of my family). Mum and dad were both irrationally proud of the Proper Pond - regularly rolling the computer over to the window so that I could see it from the Skype webcam - and during my trip home many hours were spent pointing at said Pond, naming and renaming the four fish, and stopping the cat from taking a hungry shine to any of them.

Dad's not quite as proud of the Pond anymore. In fact, he's not proud at all. It has now - in his words - 'turned into a froggie brothel'. And he is not happy about it.

'I know it's spring and everything,' he told me: 'but seriously, Holly. I thought an otter had fallen in and was drowning, there was so much fuss. I went outside to save it and realised it wasn't an otter at all: there was a frog orgy taking place in my brand new Pond.'
I laughed. 'How many frogs are we talking?'
'Tens. Hundreds. I don't know, they're moving too much to count. I don't know where to look, it's totally unsavory. I have to walk to the garden shed with my hand across my eyes, dirty little buggers. I fear for the fish, I really do. I think they're still under there somewhere, permanently traumatised.'
'What are you going to do?'
'I don't know, Holly. Your mum keeps laughing at me. It's not funny. What can I do? I can't kill the frogs, especially not while they're all at it. But it's ridiculous: when they're done with their disgusting habits they're going to have millions of babies, and I can't kill them either. We're in trouble. I think I might have to move house.'
'You know what you are, don't you,' I told him. 'You're the madam of a frog brothel, dad. You're the Frog Pimp.'
'Oh Jesus Christ. I don't want to be the Frog Pimp. If even one of them turns out to be a prince, I'm out of here.'
'Dad, if any of them turn out to be a prince, you're sending them over to meet me straight away.'
Dad sighed. 'Remember when it was just a hole full of rain water?' he said in a tired voice. 'Remember that? There were no frogs at all. That was nice, wasn't it? They were the good old days, when I could walk into my own garden without being corrupted.'

Things have gotten no better. Yesterday morning dad dropped his mobile phone in the pond while in the process of keeping my mum up to date on 'the shenanigans', and by the time he'd made his way through the heaving, thrashing masses to retrieve it again the phone didn't work anymore. And to make matters that little bit worse: mum heard the splash, thought dad had suffered a heart-attack brought on by all the post-watershed action, immediately started crying and rang an ambulance, so dad was forced to explain to a handful of medics that he wasn't, actually, dying, but was simply preoccupied with trying to poke shagging frogs away from his phone with the end of a coat-hanger.

You know, he emailed me this morning, by the time I managed to get the horny little sods away from it my bill was astronomical. I think they must have been making long distance calls to the mangroves or the swamps or wherever it is they come from.
France? I offered tentatively.

Every dad hopes that one day his daughter will find a prince. Only my dad goes as far as collecting frogs for me, just in case.

Judging on current behaviour, however, I'm not sure that any of these froggies are likely candidates.

Whether they're French or not.