Once upon a time in a pond there lived frog daddies and frog mummies with their baby frogs. Because they wanted their children to be smart, they sent them to frog school. Frog school was a place on the surface of the pond where the water lilies grew thick. Each frog sat on a water lily leaf and listened to the teacher.
That day, the little frogs were learning the alphabet. The teacher recited and the children repeated.
“A, b, c …,” said the teacher.
While all the little frogs were correctly repeating after the teacher, suddenly a loud croaking was heard: “Croak, blah, blah, …”
The frog which made the terrible sound was Trixie and she did it deliberately. And the other frog, called Artie, giggled.
“Come on, children, pay attention and repeat correctly,” the teacher admonished reproved them and started chanting again.
“Croak, blah, blah, blah, ugh, eh, ow,” Artie croaked loudly.Trixie the frog, who was sitting next to him, laughed so hard that she fell off the leaf into the water.
“You’ll both get an F if you don’t learn to say the alphabet correctly,” the teacher threatened them. “Now calm down and pay attention.”
But the two of them just kept being naughty and babbling their nonsense.
Just then a big dog, a St. Bernard named Boots, was walking by the pond. He would often come to drink from the pond after chewing his master’s new boots. That’s why he was called Boots.
As soon as the teacher frog noticed the big dog, she called to the frogs, “Students, get in the water quickly so he doesn’t drink you.”
And in a moment so short that you could barely blink twice, all the frogs jumped into the pond and hid under the surface. Well, not all of them. Two frogs which didn’t hear the frog teacher’s call. I’m sure you can guess which ones they were. Oh, yes, Trixie and Artie. For all their croaking and singing, those two heard nothing at all. They didn’t even notice the dog coming. And when they finally noticed it, it was too late.
The St.Bernard opened his huge mouth and started chomping water like he hadn’t drank in a month. And as he drank, he swallowed both Trixie and Artie. Then he rolled into the shade under a tree and settled down to sleep.
Artie and Trixie were pressing him in his belly, and their croaking disturbed him, but not enough to make him open his mouth again.
“Artie, what are we going to do? Croaking won’t make him open his mouth,” Trixie worried.
“I know how to open his mouth. We have to teach him the alphabet. As soon as he says ‘Ah’ he’ll open his mouth and we’ll jump out.”
“What an idea! Only if we remember how to say it right. We should have listened more to the teacher frog.”
“If we get out, we’ll always pay attention at school,” Artie and Trixie promised each other, and got to work.
“A, b, c, d, e,
we are two frogs who want to be free
f, g, h, i, j
we’ve been naughty all day
k, l, m, n, o
our croaking will make your stomach growl
p, q, r, s, t, u,
open your mouth and let us through
v, w, x, y, z
quack there and quack back.
We croak the alphabet.
The frogs croaked so nicely, and then Artie called out loudly:
“Now you, doggo. Show me if you know the alphabet!”
The dog thought and tried to remember. It had been a long time since he had been to dog school, yet he remembered how the alphabet had started.
“Aaa,” he grunted, opening his mouth wide.
This was the moment Artie and Trixie had been waiting for. In one leap, they jumped out of the dog’s mouth and hopped across the lawn back to their pond.
“Beeee, that’s for St. Bernard, hehehe,” they heard Boots growl before they dove under the water.
The next day, the teacher frog almost didn’t recognize them. They both sat quietly, listened and repeated all the letters of the alphabet carefully and correctly. And when the teacher called them to recite the alphabet by heart, both Trixie and Artie recited their dog belly poem. They both got an A with an asterisk, and they never annoyed the frog teacher again.
And Boots? He lay under the tree until dark before he remembered the next letter of the alphabet. And maybe he wouldn’t have remembered if the moon hadn’t appeared in the shape of a crescent, which reminded him of the letter C.
