Unlike most little girls, I loved snakes. I crawled through the tall grass with my eyes set on finding a brown or green snakeskin. After watching countless snake catchers on the National Geographic channel, I knew exactly how to capture one without having its fangs sink into my fingers. Once caught, I’d let them curl around my arms like leather bangles and bracelets, their red spliced tongues tickling my skin, as I stood in my mother’s flowerbeds.
I also loved frogs. Before I could remember, my grandmother gave me a frog wind chime that I hung on my bedroom window; I admired the glass frog more than the tinkling music. Each day, I ran down the grass-clad hill, jumped along my mother’s rock path through the garden, ducked under the weather-worn horse fence, and crept down to the pond.
I knew to tiptoe so I didn’t startle the frogs who sat at the surface basking in the sun. Sometimes I could reach from the land, other times I had to traipse through the green slim and violet marsh orchids. Either with my hands or butterfly net, I’d grasp the frog and bring him to my bucket to name and watch.
Yet these two loves were inevitable to meet and test my devotion.
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