Mother Nature Doesn’t Love You Back

My attention is occupied by a nature documentary at low volume.

It’s late spring and raining lightly outside. The narrator’s reassuring received pronunciation introduces tonight’s protagonist, a rare species of desert-dwelling toad.

Greg once told me, after a few Japanese highballs, that participating in the illegal trade of exotic amphibians comes with certain risks, especially when said amphibians are unique, strikingly colored, or endangered. Bad things do happen on occasion—but this—

“So, what do we do?”

“Jesus, you gave me a heart attack,” I reply, hands over my face, heart hammering in my chest. I try to gather myself.

No apology from Bronwyn, my current sugar baby. “What do we do, then?”

“I don’t know.”

Bronwyn crosses her arms, anxious, bewildered. Then she starts drumming her fingers again: first the bookcase, then over to the well-stocked, dimly lit bar—

“Don’t do that, it isn’t helping.”

“And watching television is?” she asks.

“I’m trying to think.”

Bronwyn plumps herself down on the overstuffed ottoman.

My mind is overloaded: rarest of the family pipidae—the Slate Surinam Toad—undocumented import through Brazil because screw CITES—only a handful ever seen in the wild since the 60s—Greg flexed over how much he paid for something that looked melted, like an asphalt patch with feet. Pipa rasa, interesting handle for a living rubber mat.

I browse channels, collecting myself. News, legal advertisement, self-help guru, talking heads talking over each other, fuck, fuck, fuck…

“You know what a zoonotic virus is?” I ask Bronwyn.

She shakes her head.

I sigh deeply. “It’s a virus that jumps from animals to people—rabies, bird flu, Ebola, West Nile, the plague…”

Bronwyn looks about the room, at the large reef aquarium, another point of pride for Greg. Fluorescent alien coral formations, crimson and yellow and orange and cobalt exotic fish drifting in narcotic contentment, effervescent bubbles rising to the surface—contained, safe, and legal. Perfectly, blessedly legal.

“We should call the police,” Bronwyn says.

“That fucker had teeth, for God’s sake. Just all these tiny little…teeth. And Greg’s like oh, no, it’s more like their jaws are serrated like a saw, you see it in African bullfrogs, blah, blah. And I’m like, but these fuckers eat worms and bugs, why teeth? And Greg goes, yeah, they’re still trying to figure that one out, big guy.”

“We could try animal control. Or CDC.”

“Ok…ok. So how do we explain what we found in Greg’s kitchen, then?”

Bronwyn shudders, “don’t talk about it.”

“We’ll have to if we do what you say.” I lower my voice, just so Bronwyn might appreciate the gravity of our situation. “Think about it. We’re at the epicenter of something unknown. And potentially very bad. OK? Now, do we want any of this? Do you? Because if we do, we’re beyond fucked. Got that? And all your family’s money and connections won’t make a bit of difference. That’s because we’re not entirely innocent. Like those Asian Arowana you just had to have, remember that? Five years for that one, couple hundred thousand dollars in fines. United States vs. Bronwyn Aubrey. Bet Mums and Dadums would love the publicity.”

“You’re just as guilty. You helped him.”

OK, she has me there. Come on, dude, focus. Look around. There’s a miniature cubical aquarium in a wall alcove opposite, contents: water, black gravel, green plastic plant, one blankly staring albino African clawed frog—

Greg’s Surinam was like that: always watching. Attentive, I guess. It followed movement, which is odd because Surinam toads are mostly inert.

Greg doted on that malevolent-looking motherfucker. I asked him what the appeal was, why not a cat or dog or even a hamster, something with brains and a personality? I know he loved exotic stuff and all that, but why this ugly lump? Didn’t it bite?

It had in fact bit him once, just a nip on middle and index fingers of this right hand. The teeth were sharp but the bite weak, hardly penetrating the skin.

Just a little love bite, right?

Greg just smiled and said, you might love Mother Nature, big guy, but Mother Nature doesn’t love you back.

It’s funny when you think about it, the freak show that is much of animal life. Fish with parasites in place of their tongues. Zombie bugs controlled by fungi. Cuckoo birds foisting their murderous offspring on other birds. The list goes on and on.

But why this nightmare? Greg and I aren’t bad people. We don’t deal drugs. We don’t traffic human beings. Neither one of us has ever hurt a fly—we just happen to meet a demand for a niche hobby that society has decided to restrict and regulate when it could be, oh, I don’t know, maybe fighting real crime, right? And if maybe society did so, we might not be here right now. Do you see what I mean?
I run my fingers through my hair. Don’t panic, don’t panic—

“Bloody puke on the floor,” Bronwyn says, “in the kitchen sink…”

Deep breath and a slow mental count to ten…

“He wasn’t feeling well a couple of days ago,” I say. “He called me and said so.”

“What diseases do amphibians have?”

“Salmonella’s the only one I know. This isn’t salmonella.”

A bright silent commercial flickers onscreen, an animated owl with astigmatism is trying to sell me car insurance. Oh, good one, TV, thanks.

“Mycobacteriosis,” Bronwyn reads carefully, staring at her phone. “Could this become an epidemic, then?”

“It could.”

“But an epidemic of what?”

“I don’t know. It would be entirely new.”

The room is cool, but I’m starting to sweat now. Just a potential epidemic, folks, nothing to worry about.

“We need to find Greg and get him to the hospital,” Bronwyn says.

“Seriously? His medical history is completely fake, Bronwyn. He picks and chooses his conditions so he can slide through customs. Take a trip here, take a trip there, no hassle.”

I run my hand through my hair.

“What if he’s dead?” Bronwyn asks.

“Then we at need to find the body and…dispose of it.”

The high-end kitchen is dimly lit by four pendant ceiling lights. Very modern, dark granite and wood-paneled, and minimalist. One side is a window wall overlooking the sculpted, manicured green backyard with its cobblestone path and Japanese boxwood shrubs.

“On my God,” Bronwyn gasps. “Out by the koi pond, by the little pagoda! Look!”

“What?”

“Something moved!”

Heart pounding, I squint through glass into the humid half-darkness. God, please be imagining things, Bronwyn. I see the gray stone pagoda, the pond and path circling it and…yes, she’s right, a shape squatting on one of the decorative boulders. And I’m certain it’s human. Jesus Christ. Greg lives alone and the help is out of town, so, it must be him.

“Bronwyn. Stay here. Don’t follow me. Got that?”

“No, let me go with you—”

“Don’t argue. Just stay here.”

Another deep breath and another count to ten, and I slide the door open.

Cool rain immediately prickles my skin and hair. Everything is misted and dark green but for splashes of blooming color: pink, red, and purple, everything is quiet. Follow the sandstone pathway pass the hedge to the koi pond, and when you get to Greg, keep your distance. Speak quietly and reasonably. You have no idea of his mental state. And if he is erratic or aggressive, defend yourself.

No strange shape by the pagoda, nothing but white and black and orange koi brainlessly milling about in the pond, hoping for food. Last year we had a barbecue here, a garden party with prime rib, hors d’ouevres, wine and cheese, a DJ, an ice sculpture and premium cigars. Greg had his usual highballs and joked with me about the time one of his foreign operatives tried to smuggle a rare pit viper through Nepalese customs. The operative had hidden the viper in his pants, only to be bit in the thigh because the viper wasn’t fully sedated.

Jesus, did he die? I asked.

No, but he probably wished he had, Greg replied. I guess the pain was off the charts. Took a little too long to get him antivenom and he developed necrosis. You ever see a surgically debrided human thigh? Now that’s a different kind of cut of meat, big guy.

The US State Department has a 500,000-dollar reward for information on my operation, was Greg’s other flex.

Well, maybe ‘had’ is the correct tense here.

This is over my head. Way over. This is something for one of the other higher-ranking guys to handle, not me. The vet we work with warned us about something like this and said that eventually someone would bring back something that should’ve been left alone.

On with the phone flashlight: nothing to see but wet, mist, greenery, rippling puddles and terraced landscaping.

No, no, wait—a bundle, not far from the koi pond. Clothing, maybe? It looks like clothing. Did Greg strip his clothes due to fever? And, in some sort of delirium, wade into the koi pond to bring his temperature down? It’s possible. Fever makes people do strange things. I hallucinated Jesus once during a particularly bad bout with the flu when I was younger. He wanted to know why he never saw me in church.
I asked why he didn’t keep the other kids from clobbering me at recess.

“Greg? You around?”

A distant dog starts barking somewhere. Don’t panic, stupid thing is just barking to bark, not because Greg has suddenly appeared, naked, feverish, out of his mind and contagious.

Upon closer inspection, it is clothes, silk twill pajama bottoms and matching robe by Louis-Vuitton—in a sodden, rumpled, disorderly pile. Only the best, big guy.

From the pajama bottoms comes the hum of Greg’s cellphone. Shit, do I see how it is, do I answer? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Did he call 911? It can’t be 911, but if it is then they’ll send the cops if I don’t pick up but if I pick up, hey, look who’s in the news, look who’s in prison, look who’s getting shivved in the lunch line—
Look who’s Patient Zero plus One.

“Greg? It’s me, Dallas.”

And I’m totally not going to brain you with this bat.

The dog goes silent and then resumes barking. Rain gently patters on leaves and the phone hums intermittently—I almost go to answer it and then stop, contagion, disease lingering, just waiting for human contact. Oh my God, why did we not just deal drugs or run guns to dirtball countries? Because what we were doing was so much safer, according to Greg. Interpol does not really give a shit about the Chinese Giant Salamander; Sarah McLachlan doesn’t lose sleep over rare poison dart frogs.

OK, OK, the phone goes to voicemail, good, fine, I was just about to smash it with my bat.

Phone—wait—what if Bronwyn is calling for help right now? What if she decided, fuck Dallas, I’m calling CDC or the cops or WTAD News 11, ‘Serving the Greater Lewisville Area, Serving You!’

Serving me up on a silver platter for the American viewing public, more likely…

Splashing and thrashing from the koi pond—they’re going nuts, the way they do whenever someone gets close and they’re hungry. I swear they knew and loved Greg, they practically heaved themselves out of the water for treats and scratches—just this fucking mosh pit of bright orange, white, speckled, silvery grey and coal black bodies churning the pond into froth.

“Greg…Greg, you feeding the fish?”

Somebody is, although in the near-dark I can’t discern any detail, just someone squatting at the edge of the pond. It must be Greg, patiently feeding his little darlings.

“Greg, look, Bronwyn and me are here to help you. This is serious. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but we’re here to help. OK?”

The shape shifts slightly, as if listening.

“Do you understand? Can you answer? Are you able to answer me, Greg?”

The shape does not answer me. Think, Dallas…

“Greg, what’s your last name? Do you know what day this is? No, no, no, stop that, stop with the skin,

Greg, that’s not good, you’re hurting yourself. Stop, OK? Good. Now just stay there and let me get a look at you, I promise we’re going to fix whatever’s wrong and nobody needs to know anything, right? Everything on the down low. So just me get my phone light here and see what’s going on with you…”
What was going on with Greg is that he wasn’t really Greg anymore.

Now by the rule of any B-grade horror movie, this would’ve been my cue to scream or go ‘oh, Dear God, no,’ and all that. I do neither. I just stand there and wonder what the hell this large, wet, grey, frog-like thing has done with Greg because, well, it’s wearing Greg, or at least part of him. Not the head, at least: that’s roughly triangular, noseless, and flat, very flat. It reminds me of a dead autumn leaf but for the tiny black bead-like eyes at either end, the wide narrow mouth beneath. There’s hair, whiskers or something—Greg always fretted over his hairline—but not much. Worse is Greg’s skin, sloughing off in loose pale rags and ribbons from his forearms and torso, skin that this thing is carefully pulling off with spotted rubbery paws and clumsily eating like an amphibian during shed, some for it, some for the koi, some for it—

The Greg-frog-thing finally notices the light and shields its awful face with one paw. It pushes through a bank of decorative shrubbery to escape, more irritated than fearful, I think. What I see next, though—
Headlights stab through the dark and a car horn blares urgently, sending the dog into a renewed frenzy. It’s Bronwyn in the G-Wagon, rolling over the carefully manicured lawn and through stout bushes like a silver tank. Best tax write-off ever, I swear.

I run toward the G-Wagon. Sweet Jesus, I’m so in over my head, we’re all in over our heads now, because what I saw was perfectly awful, and it was not Greg’s split, mutilated face cast aside like a Halloween mask on the grass, a bloodied eyeless face with lower teeth jutting—no that was not the worst.

It was what I saw as the thing slipped away. Now, Greg had been very keen on securing a female of Pipa rasa for breeding purposes, so we didn’t have to fuck around with foreign customs, airport security, and testy local tribes. Next would’ve been a male of the species, of course, but they were even harder to locate than the female.

It might go without saying, but here goes anyway because like I said much of animal life is a fucking freak show and this is no exception. Now your Surinam toad gets up to this, as Greg explained to me: during amplexus or whatever fancy word they use for frogs doing the dirty, the male and female somersault through the water. It’s got something to do with proper fertilization of the eggs, right?

“Hey, a few candles, some Barry White,” I said.

Greg just gave me this pained look and goes, no, the strangest thing is that the female grows little holes on her back and that’s where the eggs develop and become all these tiny Surinam toads. They pop in and out, do their toad thing for a while and then swim off for good. I already knew this, having watched a video about it, but when Greg was a couple sheets to the wind you just let him talk.

Greg-frog-thing had holes all over his back, you see, this honeycomb of maybe fifty to a hundred holes, and in those holes were dark reddish-brown faces, OK, horrible little faces somewhere between frog and human, but undeveloped, like grubs, like jelly—have you ever seen a human fetus at six, seven weeks?

The faces looked like that, but much more frog-like.

Bronwyn barrages me with frantic questions the moment I slam the passenger door shut. I don’t hear any of it, it’s just babble to my ears, nonsense, gibberish as I turn the radio on and search the stations for something to listen to, maybe NPR or classical for some sanity, right?

“How bad is it?” Bronywn, frustrated, frightened, shouts at me.

Babe, you have no idea.

Credit: Lord Cromlech