Life Sketches by Terry Berkson
A Frog in Her Throat
It all happened so fast that I didn’t have time to interfere. One morning last August, after I let the chickens out, fed and watered them, I noticed several small frogs were jumping near the turkey-wire fence that surrounds the coop yard. One frog was foolish enough to hop under the enclosure and was immediately set upon by Rosie, one of my golden comets that looks more like a Rhode Island red than the rest. She carried the squirming frog to a private corner where she could devour the catch without another hen trying to steal it away. I had heard somewhere that the skin of a frog is poisonous and I thought that Rosie eating the frog wasn’t such a good idea. Before I could act, though, the frog was gone, apparently down the chicken’s throat. So, I finished my chores and went back to the house.
I didn’t think anything more about it until the next day, when I walked out to the coop to open the door. All the chickens appeared—except Rosie. I found her sitting in a laying box, looking like she was trying to push out an egg. At the same time she was making a strange noise. It sounded like a cross between a cough and a “gribbit.” I hadn’t actually seen what Rosie had done to the frog before she ate it and I was picturing a whole frog stuck in her throat. Later that day, when I went out to the coop to see how the hen was doing, she was still in the laying box and still looking like she was trying to produce an egg. I thought of grabbing her and turning her upside down and trying to work the frog out of her throat, but that procedure hadn’t proven successful on another occasion when a hen appeared to be choking on something, so I decided to let nature take its course.
Again, that night, when I went to close in the chickens, I heard a sound I had never heard a chicken make before. It was nearly dark as I quietly approached the coop. I could already hear the hens with their sleep song. They don’t exactly snore, but to my ear they make a sound that’s somewhere between snoring and keening. This time, added to the mix was the new sound that blended into a snore-keen-“gribbit.” When I entered the coop and looked in the laying box, Rosie was still there with no egg to show for all of her efforts. Things didn’t look good. She wasn’t eating. I figured that she’d be gone in another day or two, so I called my chicken expert, Roger Vaughn, who said, “A frog in her throat?”
“And I don’t mean figuratively,” was my answer.
He laughed and said, “Turn her upside down and try to ring it out.”
I hesitantly took Vaughn’s advice but, once again, all I got for my efforts was some fluid. When I finished I put Rosie back in the laying box and closed the coop door.
The next morning, I was prepared for the worst. I even thought of a shovel in the shed that I would use to dig a hole. I pulled the cable that opened the chickens’ door. To my surprise, Rosie was the first bird to appear. She fled the coop like a bull out of a chute and headed straight for the feed trough. Sure enough, there was an egg in the box she had monopolized. As I reached for it, I heard a “gribbit” and spotted a small frog sitting on the coop floor near the water pail. I caught the little bugger and put him in a coffee can. He appeared to be in good shape. I decided to hold on to him for a while. Rosie has been doing fine since then and has recovered her old voice. As for the frog, I named him Jonah and later let him go in nearby Patches Pond.
Terry Berkson’s articles have appeared in “New York” magazine, “Automobile” magazine and many others. Reviews on his critically-praised memoir, “Corvette Odyssey,” can be found on TerryBerkson.com.
