A hot time in the hollow tree

News that a library in the north of England has banned from its shelves a book about the sex life of the natterjack toad makes one wonder what on earth its subscribers may be missing.

He hit town just after dark, riding fast, the sweat of the journey turned to salt on his brow, the taste of dust on his tongue where it had seeped through the neckershief. It had been a long day and it could be a longer night.

He barely slackened pace as he swung into the main street, past the single saloon, for he knew where he was going. He had been there many times before. At a faded sign that said No 17, outside a rough clapboard house, he dismounted and drew his sword and pistol, placing both in a stained duffle bag on the carrier.

Then Horatio Frog leaned his off-road bicycle against a tree.

When eventually he spoke, the question emerged as a hoarse croak. The dust had done something diabolical to his larynx. Yet the answer from within the house was eager, as always: “Yes, kind sir, I sit and spin!”

The lady was a spin doctor for her cousin in local government yet, in the matter of dialogue, Horatio Frog had to admit she lacked imagination.

But with one bound, that left the front door swinging drunkenly on its hinges, he was by her side. He spoke again, passion rising in his voice like a river: “Do you always sit and spin in a sheer négligé from Paris?” asked Frog.

At once, there was a frantic rending as Frog tore away at the material, of the neckerchief still around his mouth. Then, hotly, their lips met and the air became filled with the chemistry of old, of many such nights and many such meetings.

And once more, Missy Mouse (for it was indeed she) fell limply into his arms. Though not without some difficulty, for Frog had forgotten to unbuckle his scabbard.

His embrace was hungrier this time, almost animal. Missy Mouse could feel a wild urgency in him. She managed a small, nervous giggle before they finally came together as one and the night exploded in a myriad stars.

Later, much later, she found the energy to speak. “Of course, you know,” she said, ‘Without my Uncle Rat’s consent, I couldn’t marry the Pres-i-dent.”

The effect on Horatio Frog was as though shocked by a thousand volts. “Marry?” he exclaimed. “Who the heck’s talking about marrying? I’m a travelling man, woman, you know that! I’ve got a reputation to keep!”

But even as he uttered the words, Horatio Frog realised the game was up. For there in the doorway stood Uncle Rat himself. In one large hand was a shotgun; in the other, the stained duffle bag and one of Frog’s bicycle wheels.

Escape was impossible and Uncle Rat laughed and shook his fat sides to see the frog so compromised.

Their wedding, in a hollow tree by the lake, was an elaborate affair although to Frog’s mind the breakfast – prepared by the bride’s fair hand – left a good deal to be desired. “Two green beans and a black-eyed pea?” he muttered to her between the speeches. “Don’t you know anything about insect cooking?”

But in the night, when they were alone, when the moon hung like a plump cricket (or so Horatio Frog imagined) on the water, it was good, it was grand.

Missy Mouse whispered tenderly, “Did the earth move for you too?”

“It wasn’t the earth,” said Frog. “It was the rotten moss in this old tree. I’ve noticed it before.”

“Before?” cried Missy Mouse. “How could you have noticed it before? Unless you were here with another woman?!”

It was their first argument and one aggravated when Missy Mouse got around to producing the honeymoon brunch – two stale carrots and a frostbitten radish. Clearly, Frog thought, her talents lay in other directions. And it was this thought that brought them together once more. So they made up. And made up.

Afterwards, Frog took her sailing on the lake and it was thus the tragedy struck that has become legend. Their beautiful pea-green boat became snarled up in a bunch of weeds. Frog tried to punt them clear with a runcible spoon but to no avail.

So he persuaded Missy Mouse that they would both have to step out on to a convenient lily-pad and push. That lily-pad, as we now know, was actually a large green snake in cunning disguise who swallowed them up.

‘It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again,” the snake was to comment later, to no one in particular. “These mixed marriages never work.”

John Ryan’s Midweek column, Cape Argus.