My oldest daughter, Monica, loved frogs when she was a little girl. She had her room painted with lily pads and frogs, she collected frog figurines, she had rain boots that looked like frogs and a matching umbrella with the handle shaped like a frog and her favorite color was green (the color of a frog). When she was 6 we sent away for a mail order tadpole that she could watch as it grew into a
frog. Monica loved this frog and she named it Lilly. Lilly grew to be quite a large frog that was the size of Monica’s palm when she was full grown. Lilly didn’t like to be held so Monica rarely took her out of her bowl. One day, a friend came over and wanted to hold Lilly. Monica obliged and took her out of her bowl. At the time we were working on the floors in Monica’s room so the floor vent covers were pulled up. Of course, Lilly jumped to the floor and ended up falling into the vent. We could hear her hopping down the vent from the 3rd floor toward the air conditioning unit. I quickly turned off the air conditioner and started calling for help to get Lilly out of the vent. I called animal control first, but they couldn’t help unless the animal was a nuisance. I called the air conditioner repair service to see if they would open up the vents, they declined. I then called the police. The local police came right over. We live in a small suburb outside of Chicago that has a very low crime rate so we were fortunate that the police had time to help us. The officer pulled the cover off the air conditioner but Lily wasn’t there. Monica reached in to see if she could feel for her, but ended up cutting her finger on the sharp metal of the vent. While she ran to get a bandaid, Lilly must have seen the light and started hopping toward us and low and behold there she was peaking out. I yelled for Monica and she caught Lilly before she jumped out. It was a very hoppy ending. Lilly ended up living until she was about 8 years old.
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