--- LABOR DAY FROG ---
9th February 2019

So it's Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend and my labor of the morning is that I'm down in the indoor rec center printing off the scores from the college games yesterday, and printing off some address labels so I can send my friend Gucci something down in another block. There's only two printers in this joint, one's in the library and the other one's in the indoor rec center. It's a screwy system, but this is prison and the whole damn place is screwy. Every time that I see the shift change for the guards and see them coming down the sidewalk towards my cell block, I say to whoever's around, "Here comes the Insane Clown Posse."

So I'm standing at the printer station and I notice movement in the window . I see something trying to crawl up the bars. When I lean-in and look a little closer, I see that it's a tree frog. He's a little fat one too, but he looks like he's had either a rough night, is on the run, or he's strung-out on flies and he's down at the indoor rec center trying to cop, but that he's out of stamps. I go to pick him up and he can't even hop away because he has hair and garbage and dust all over him. So I scoop him up in my palm and take him into the bathroom and run water over him (from the sink). Being that I've had two frogs as pets during this 20 yr hostage crisis (Gangster and Shorty Morgan, God bless the dead), I consider myself something of an armchair frogologist. Not to get all wordy on you this Labor Day weekend, but I know that frogs are subcutaneous; they drink through their skin. I also know that they don't have tongues and love flies. After washing him off, I bring him home.

When I get him back to my cell, I see that he's a little beast. Coming in, he mean-mugs my cellie and give him a look like, "And what, fool?" I had just watched a piece on ESPN about the Chicago Bears acquiring Kahlil Mack (an awesome defensive player), so Da Bears were fresh in my mind. And the more I looked at the frog, he looked like a Chicago Bear, except Green. So I named him Mike Ditka after the legendary Bear coach. When I called him by his new name and asked him, "Are you hungry, Mike Ditka?" he gave me the googly eyes, and looked at me like I had crickets in my pocket.

He seemed like he wanted to stay for a while, so I built him a little frogitat in the window that consists of a Yellow peanut butter jar lid with water in it for a pool (this is Florida, after all) and I wrapped paper around an empty vitamin bottle to give him some privacy in his new house. Then I made a little sign and hung it above his house that says "Green Lives Matter." Finally, I explained the rules of the cell to him, and then I picked him up and held him on my finger. I told him, "Even if you never get no bigger, you'll always be my little nigga." He seemed to like that, and with that, the bonding process was over.

This is the Labor Day story of my new rescue frog, Mike Ditka. I'll let you guys know how he's adapting to prison. But from the way it looks, he should do just fine.

Jeffrey P. Frye
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Bank Robber's Blog
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