My sophomore year of college, I was feeling a little bit of empty-nesters syndrome. My dog (Patches) was at home with my parents and I was feeling quite lonely. Never mind that I was living in an apartment with 3 of my friends... I felt lonely. I needed to "parent" something, which in itself is kind of hilarious because I'm not the parenting type. If you'll recall a couple of blog posts back, I told you the story of how I blew up a frog - Schroeder. Seeing as how well my stint with Schroeder went, I decided getting another African Dwarf Frog was the answer.
So I got Webster. Some $2 for the frog, $25ish for the tank (much smaller than Schroeder's,) $15 for the rocks and things that went inside his home and I had a new pet! Webster - a name suggestion from Allie from back when I blew up Schroeder - was super active and a lot of fun to watch and "play" with. He was a FAST swimmer and would eat voraciously every time I fed him. I enjoyed him a lot.
For about 9 days. On the ninth day in the morning I woke up and Webster was upside down on the bottom of the tank. In my previous experiences with ADF's, I'd never seen one on the bottom of the tank, so I took to tapping on the side really HARD to try to get him to "awaken." He did not. Webster had clearly ceased living. Not only was I sad to the extent you can be after a frog dies 9 days after acquiring it, but I was also upset with the quality of the "product" that I had purchased. So I did what any normal person does when they dislike a product. I returned Webster. I scooped Webster up with my little net and put him in a plastic baggie. I put the plastic baggie in another baggie and then in a little box. Then I went directly to the aquatic section of PetsMart with my receipt and my dead Webster. Take a moment to think about how you would react if you were this poor kid at PetsMart as you recognize what is going on. It took about 5 seconds before he grabbed a manager who told me to pick a new frog and it'd be mine. No charge. No questions. What questions could they have asked anyway: "Are you aware of how insane this exchange makes you?"
About 20 minutes later I was home and slowly acclimating Webster 2.0 (creative name, right?! Just wait til the next aquatic life series post) to his new home. He had an exciting life. I had him for almost 2 years. He was awesome. Very active and fun. He used to go home to Chicago with me regularly in his little travel container. Sometimes when I was scooping him in the net he'd try to jump out and hop around the floor. Once I accidentally tapped him with the net and he froze in shock and laid on the bottom of the tank. A few minutes later he snapped back to life - no big deal. I don't have any fun stories about Webster 2.0 except that he is the product of a bat-shit crazy girl who put her dead frog in a baggie and returned him for a clean exchange at the local PetsMart.
END.
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