30 Frogs and 40 Eels

The eels were forlorn. Some dastard had deposited them in Queens, careless for their future. They writhed like fettucine, breathing and braiding in and out of each other. The real estate market was tight, with thirty frogs also competing for square footage. It was a lot to ask of a neighborhood pond.

The email swarmed four states: “Can you re-home our eels?”

We live in a world where people abandon eels, three dozen strong, in the shadow of the World’s Fair globe. But I live in a tidepool where eels have ambassadors, and no strand comes loose.

I have been paddling towards this place since splashdown. A little girl loved is a reckless ship of mercy. I wrote essays on alligators and filibustered for their respect on the monkey bars. I sought street cats and named them Strudel and Schnitzel. I defended polliwogs from hooligan boys with sticks. I heard the salamanders’ bawdy songs.

We live in a world where music is counted among luxuries, and the strong command dry land. The wealthy uncle told me not to spend so much time at church. The guidance counselor read forked rivers in my palms, weepy watersheds of a “sacrificial vocation.” No one understood the overabundance of cats.

But there is always someone to advocate for the eels. Between semesters, I found wet rebels with doctorates. Dr. Chapman was aunt-mother to 400 Fijians. Dr. Hawthorne paused Pacific Rim Cosmologies to feed his orphan squirrel. Dr. Sklaroff wrote op-eds against conflict diamonds and cat declawing.

Dr. Montgomery had two thousand leeches. The first time I slipped into his office, I nearly dropped my compassion on the floor. My bleeding heart dried at the sight of the tanks lining the walls. The office was a hall of churning commas, long and exceedingly alive.

“Meet the family!” Dr. Montgomery threw his arms like exclamation points. He had banked his whole song on these swarmers. The world’s preeminent expert on leeches was pleased to have me as his intern.

It was a lot to ask of a sophomore with a pink ribbon in her braid. But I learned to love the leeches, graceful as harp strings. I learned to love the leeches because Dr. Montgomery’s love was so pungent, my caution puckered.

I learned that love is a stubborn chord, stronger than sense and wet as the heart. But music does not belong solely to those who bleed loudly.

We live in a world where wires get crossed and innocents get scorched. It’s a half-lap from empathy to ego. Captains of industry can be more selfless than streetcorner saviors. We love because we have been loved, and we love because we want to be loved. We are slippery and greedy, hiding under plain buttered noodles. Steely or sanctimonious, we splash and slosh.

No strand comes loose.

With mixed motives and cracked paddles, I found my own Atlantis, a technicolor city where kindness was queen. The tadpoles wrote coronation poems the day I entered animal rescue. Fundraising for ferals, scrawling sonnets for the hardscrabble, I was forlorn no more.

Caution is the first casualty of love, and danger dangles the rip cord of limits. Come, now; retain some dignity. There are legitimate unlovables in this world. When you see them, do a flip turn. Come back to the surface. Come, now.

But it was too late. The braid was too tight. I was not coming back. We live in a world where I am far from alone.

Somewhere in Queens, someone poured forty eels and thirty frogs into a pond barely larger than a spaghetti pot. Someone else reached out to animal rescues across four states:

“If your rescue is able to accept these friends, please let us know!”

An hour later: “We’ve placed the frogs! If you know someone who can embrace our eels, please let us know.”

We live in a world where it is possible to embrace eels. We live in a world where strong, salty people speak of “our eels.”

This world writhes with another, the dry land of dirges and decorum. It is successful and clean, a good investment unless your portfolio is alive. The worlds spit at each other like unneutered tomcats, and they both miss the open secret.

They are entangled. Wriggling or rejoicing, we all come to the creek. We see the unlovable face reflected in the water and nearly drop our dignity on the floor.

At that sliming moment, someone calls us “ours.” No strand comes loose. Someone embraces the eels.