Amphibian - Carla Gunn

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      Mrs. Wardman went over and stood beside her desk and said, ‘Children, this is Mitty. She’s new to our class. Please say hello.’ And then we all said, ‘Hello, Mitty.’ I felt sorry for and happy about Mitty at the same time. I felt sorry for her because she had a weird name and was also big, which meant that Lyle was bound to give her a hard time. I could already think of a few bad things that rhyme with Mitty, and I knew that even ‘waste of flesh’ Lyle, with brain cells for nothing but thinking up really mean things, was bound to think of them sooner or later. Mitty was definitely in for it.

      But I felt a bit happy too because having Mitty in the class might take some of the pressure off me and a few of the other kids since Lyle would have someone else to pick on. I felt a little guilty about feeling happy about that – but not guilty enough to stop thinking it. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say misery loves company. Maybe when misery is spread out it’s not so hard to take. Maybe it’s like when we have reading groups and there are five in each group instead of three, which means you don’t have to answer Mrs. Wardman’s questions as often.

      After we said hello to Mitty, we sang ‘O Canada.’ Then Mrs. Wardman announced that we were going to gain another new friend in our classroom – a class pet. She said we had to use our logic skills to guess what was under the sheet. I was a little worried when she said that because of the last time we did a logic exercise. She gave us ten minutes to write down what we thought was under there.

      I thought nine thoughts:

      1. There are only a few animals that are domesticated and would make good companion animals.

      2. One is the cat.

      3. We can see things eight times smaller than cats can.

      4. Another animal that makes a good companion is a dog.

      5. It can’t be a cat or dog because they would be making noises.

      6. A horse could be an animal companion.

      7. The show-and-tell table couldn’t hold a horse.

      8. Some people think pigs make good domesticated companion animals.

      9. We shouldn’t eat our companions.

      But I only wrote one: It is not a cat, a dog, a horse or a pig. I didn’t have a guess as to what was under the sheet because I had ruled out all suitable companion animals.

      Mrs. Wardman told us to pass in what we had written down. Then she said, ‘Okay, are you ready for the big surprise?’ All the kids yelled yes and Gordon nearly fell out of his chair because he jumped out of it and then plopped back into it really quickly, which made it tip. Mrs. Wardman told him to be careful because he could fall backwards and split his head wide open.

      Then Mrs. Wardman pulled off the sheet slowly and said, ‘It’s a … frog! Who guessed a frog?’ she asked. Nobody raised a hand. Then she said, ‘Welcome your new class pet, everyone!’

      I raised my hand and Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Yes, Phin?’ I asked her what kind of frog it was. It looked like a White’s tree frog to me but I wasn’t absolutely sure. It was smaller than my hand and a greenish turquoise colour, which is what they look like, but White’s tree frogs are nocturnal and I doubted that Mrs. Wardman would get a pet that would sleep all day and be awake all night when we weren’t even here.

      ‘It’s a White’s tree frog,’ said Mrs. Wardman.

      Mrs. Wardman told us that frogs make excellent pets because they are quiet and don’t need a lot of care. I wondered how that makes a pet excellent. Wouldn’t a rock be a good pet then too? I only thought this – I didn’t say it because Mrs. Wardman would think I was being sarcastic. I wasn’t being sarcastic, I was being serious. But I didn’t say it anyway.

      Next Mrs. Wardman told us that we all got to vote on a name for our class frog. I knew that since this was a White’s tree frog, it was male and not female because he had a greyish throat and females have white throats. Each of us wrote one name on a piece of paper and put it into the voting jar. I wrote Cuddles. I meant to be sarcastic that time, but I didn’t have to put my name on it so I knew I wouldn’t get in trouble for it.

      Then Mrs. Wardman went to the jar and asked us what the chances were that our entry would be chosen. Gordon shouted out, ‘One in twenty-three,’ and Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Yes, Gordon, you are right, good thinking.’

      But both she and Gordon were wrong because I heard Katherine and Amy talking in the row in front of me and I knew that they had both voted for Kermit. That would mean that they had a two-in-twenty-three chance of having their name chosen and the rest of us would have a one-in-twenty-three chance but only if there were no others of us who chose the same name as someone else.

      Mrs. Wardman put her hand into the jar and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘The name of our class pet toad is … Cuddles!’ she said. She smiled and some of the kids clapped and cheered. Mrs. Wardman asked whose name was Cuddles, which I didn’t think she’d ask. I raised my hand slowly and she said, ‘Nice name, Phin, congratulations.’ Then we opened our readers to page 123.

      Nobody seemed to think that was weird – a frog that was quiet, slept all day, didn’t need much attention and that you couldn’t cuddle called Cuddles. Sometimes sarcasm just doesn’t work.

      Today at school a kid got in trouble – big trouble. Her name is Jody and she got caught telling other kids that eating breath mints will make them jump higher. The teacher said this is pretending to take drugs and that there’s a zero tolerance policy for drugs. After Jody got her misbehaviour, she started crying so hard that her mother had to come get her.

      I felt bad for Jody, which made it hard to concentrate on my spelling exercises. The word activities were all about animals. One of the questions was ‘Lions live in the j _ _ _ _ _.’

      I raised my hand and Mrs. Wardman came over. I asked her if this was a trick question since there’s no J word for savannah. She said, ‘Phin, the answer is jungle. Just write jungle down.’ Then she walked back to her desk.

      I thought about not telling her that lions don’t live in the jungle because I could tell she was irritated with me. I knew this mainly because when she told me to write jungle, her eyelids fluttered and she took a deep breath.

      I thought about it for a few seconds. I remembered what my mother had told me about how maybe I shouldn’t point out to Mrs. Wardman that she’s wrong when she’s wrong. But then I decided that she should know the right answer. She was the teacher and it wouldn’t be good if she was teaching everybody the wrong thing for years and years and years. So I raised my hand again.

      ‘What is it, Phin?’ said Mrs. Wardman. She said this from her desk, which made what I had to say a little bit tricky. I didn’t want to say it out loud in front of everybody but now that I had raised my hand and she had answered, I had to say something.

      ‘The answer to question seven can’t be jungle,’ I said, ‘because lions don’t live in the jungle. They live on the grasslands and savannah.’

      Then all of a sudden other words popped into my head, but they didn’t stay in my head. It was almost like they dropped down out of my brain and into the back of my throat and I had no choice but to spit them out – it was either that or choke. But after they came out, I immediately wanted to grab them from the air, shove them back into my mouth and swallow. But it was too late. The words ‘and frogs shouldn’t live in cages, they should live in wetlands’ were out into the air making their way to Mrs. Wardman’s ears and all I could do was hope for the best.

      Mrs. Wardman didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She just looked straight at me and then she said in a really low voice with her mouth hardly moving, ‘Phin, then just leave that one out, for pity’s sake.’ She didn’t say a thing about what I said about frogs.

      So I left the jungle answer out. I should have known it was going to be a stupid exercise. On the first page there was a picture of a polar bear and a penguin sitting on the same ice floe. On the same ice floe! They

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