THE GREATEST SECOND-CHANCE FROG QUEEN

A Not-Just-4-Children FROG-TALK.

De: Rick Schmidt

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

THE GREATEST SECOND-CHANCE FROG QUEEN by filmmaker/author Rick Schmidt (he wrote the classic how-to 'FEATURE FILMMAKING AT USED-CAR PRICES," from Viking Penguin Books) has lended its pages to the voice of a small, off-green, not very attractive frog, Queen Gertrude, who makes up for her appearance with her extensive wisdom. A not-just-4-small-children read––it could be shared between an inquiring adult and medium-sized child––it nevertheless uses simple-and-direct language to explain the differences between us and amphibians... and how we're blowing it.

Where have the last couple years of our human history gone? We've been derailed by the COVID-19 virus, shook up over so many changes in daily life, new patterns of work and travel, difficulty raising children without open schools, eating at home with our self-styled menus, hoping this modern plague will lift. In the meantime, frogs keep croaking, and here’s one trying to provide some “teachable moments.”

Frogs have existed for 10+ million years of Earth's history, a hell of a lot longer than us human beings. If only they could talk! Well, Queen Gertrude does. She takes off the gloves, and holds our off-kilter human ways to account. She boldly runs down the differences between our two species, points out our many mistakes while introducing the reader to what frogs have got going for them. She explains her philosophy, about how we often miss the point. "You see...(she croaks), “…if there isn't something great and grand to lose, then the human beings don't understand the difference between succeeding and failing. They keep track of success through something called money." She continues; "...(Money) gives them the chance to play out all the damage that occurred to them during childhood." Pretty smart frog! So please don’t damage your human children, she would probably add here.

Surprisingly, we learn quite a lot about ourselves––humans––while she presents images and descriptions of her highly-poisonous South American brothers and sisters, including the usually-yellow Golden-Poison-Dart frog, Phantasmal-Poison frog, Red-Eyed tree frog, others with their deadly, skin-saturated Batrachotoxin (it prevents nerve cells from closing = 3 minutes to live!), along with a good lesson about neurons, which they–-frogs, us, & all living things––use to run all of our complex body functions. The Queen also seems to be a good student of world history, comparing numbers of casualties from our wars; Civil War, WWI, WWII, that frogs certainly had no hand/toe-pad in–––a terrible record in anyone's book!

In any case, frogs seem to have achieved a pretty good living balance, though they are currently challenged by a debilitating disease, Batrachochytrium Dendrobatidis, which has already killed a third of their species. Please allow this book to plead assistance from human scientists, to eradicate this terrible fungal disease, save the frogs from extinction. If kept alive, frogs can assist in delivering (among other secret cures...) a pain killer compound 200 times more powerful than morphine (Epibatidine). So let’s help them stick around!

Finally, Gertrude delivers a To-Do List for us people who call ourselves, "the most intelligent life" around. It's not pretty, but maybe reading this concluding FROG-TALK will help avert other wrong-headed things happening like, for instance, nuclear war. It's an important read, especially 4 anyone who doesn't stroll along on nano-pillared toe-pads.