Doc Barbara and the lonesome frog.

Although Doc Barbara's heart goes out (not literally of course - although you never know with her) to invertebrates for the most part, she has the welfare of lowly, spiny creatures very much at the centre of her core ethics, which are, let us remind ourselves: free speech, democracy, pure living and thick tights. She noticed that my frog was lonely and gave her acumen and mental stamina towards fixing the problem. What kind of chum would be therapeutic? 

He is doing his best.

At first, she provided a tortoise, thinking that slow, agreeable and undemanding company would buck him up, but he still looked very lonely.           

                               

A light bulb moment happened to her: diet. An epiphany. Flies are, perhaps, insufficient for a frog and bananas might be better. She recalled the saying:

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

It seemed to her fraught with undecipherable meaning and so she provided a bunch. Doc Barbara is accustomed to the world's seeming impervious to rational decoding. 

He does look a tad more cheerful.

Still she was not satisfied and wandered around the local ponds in her thick tights looking for more ranine companions. For the frog, not herself. Finally, she encountered a few chatting amicably together and, with Ciceronian rhetoric undiminished by her epic struggles, she persuaded them to move camp. Here is ours, rejuvenated and un-depressed with his new friends.

•                                    A merry group of frogs, with two babies for him to sing to.