Fergus Eats a Winter Fly
Fergus got me to eat one once because he told me they were absolutely delicious but I can tell you that they are the second worst tasting thing in the world. Absolutely vile, terrible, awful and they make a wicked crunching noise when you chew on them too. I was sick for a week after I ate that fly and I couldn’t eat ice cream or candy and Fergus had to go out on Halloween for me … but that’s another story.
I was telling you that Fergus likes to eat flies. He catches them with his tongue. That’s right, his tongue. His tongue is really long (he could wrap it around his head like a scarf if he wanted to) and it is quite sticky.
To catch a fly, Fergus sits very, very quietly in one place and waits for the flies to buzz around him. Flies are pretty stupid and they’ll come right up to a sitting frog just like he didn’t exist. Mother flies must not tell their babies to watch out for big fat green frogs who have giant long tongues. Anyway, a big fat buzzing fly will start to fly around Fergus’s head until suddenly.
Out comes Fergus’s tongue, zaps the fly and it sticks right to it. Fergus quickly pulls his tongue back into his head and starts munching on the fly. I’ve told you how awful it sounds but Fergus seems pretty happy whenever he’s got that munchy music going on in his head.
That tongue of Fergus’s is pretty powerful. I’ve seen him zap huge flies, big bumble bees and all kinds of flying insects. Never once did Fergus fail to bring them into his head. Nope, once you were zapped by Fergus’s tongue, you were lunch. It was a long, strong tongue.
Fergus had enough good fly food all summer when the flies were all over the place but during the winter, the flies went to sleep and Fergus really went crazy looking for them. It was like when you want a piece of candy and you can’t find one – you go nuts.
Well, Fergus was worse than that. He *really* wanted a fly and he was getting ugly about not having one to chew on. It was the coldest night of the year out there and there was no way that flies were going to be flying around.
But later that night, just before dinner, he saw one. It was the biggest, fattest, noisiest, stupid fly you can ever imagine. It was so big it didn’t just buzz, it BUZZED.
It didn’t sound like a fly, it sounded like a chainsaw ripping down a whole forest. This was one noisy fly. And Fergus saw it. Fergus was on the chair next to the window and he watched that fly buzz around the light over the kitchen table for over an hour.
Fergus never moved.
That fly then flew over to the stove and buzzed around the stove for another hour. My mom was trying to make dinner and it drove her nuts. She shooed it away time after time.
Fergus never moved.
The fly flew over to my dad sitting in his big chair and buzzed around him reading the paper. He swatted at it with a rolled up section of the newspaper and tried to crush it against the chair but he missed. That big old fly was too smart for my dad.
Fergus never moved.
Then the fly flew over to the window right next to where Fergus was sitting. Fergus’s eyes moved to follow the fly but his body never moved. It was easy to see the fly against the window because it was so cold outside the frost had painted pictures on the glass in wonderfully white patterns. Our old farmhouse windows were cold but neither the fly nor Fergus seemed aware of how cold they really were.
Fergus never moved.
The fly flew around on the window sill and flew behind Fergus where he could only hear it buzzing but could not see it. The fly flew over to the window right next to where Fergus was sitting on the chair and
Fergus moved.
Fergus’s tongue went out so far and so fast; I had never seen them go that far or that fast ever before. It was a record breaking tongue lashing that Fergus was about to give that fly. It was an awesome tongue that should have been a record setting fly dinner for Fergus. It was greased lightning, it was gigantic and it was all aimed at one big, buzzy fly.
Fergus’s tongue and the fly hit the cold window at the same time.
You all know that ice is frozen water and if you touch an ice cube with your finger, your finger will stick to the ice cube a bit.
Well, Fergus didn’t.
And when he shot his warm, wet tongue out onto the very cold window glass, his tongue froze to the glass. His sticky tongue had caught the fly but the freezing cold window glass had caught his tongue. It froze that tongue right to the window. Fergus was stuck.
And that wasn’t the worst part.
No. The worst part was when Fergus tried to break his tongue off the frozen window by pulling his tongue back into his head. That was the worst part. You see, as soon as Fergus started pulling his strong tongue back into his head, he didn’t get his tongue back. Instead Fergus’s head started moving toward the window pane and the rest of his huge green body went with it. Fergus was headed for the frozen window pane at the speed of frog.
The sound that Fergus made when he splattered into the frozen window pane was like a gunshot. The cold glass broke – in fact it broke a nice frog-sized hole – and Fergus went tumbling outside into the snowy night. The sound of cracking glass and the whistling wind now coming through the hole brought my dad right over to find out what I had done to break the window.
I was in trouble. Big trouble. Who’s going to believe my story that Fergus’s tongue was so powerful that it dragged him to the window so fast that the window broke? Not my dad that’s for sure.
I had to go to bed without dinner that night and Fergus had to stay outside until I could sneak down to bring him inside. The smile on his face told me he had caught his fly. But you know he was so cold from being outside in the snow he was almost as stiff as a board and I had to thaw him out by….
But maybe I should save that story for another night.
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