Fergus Takes A Nap
Our ironing board at home stayed in the corner of the kitchen and sometimes when my mother was doing five different things at once (don’t all mothers do five different things at once?) she would let the ironing board stay up while she did some other kitcheny things.
Well, on this sunny day, the ironing board was up. The cover for the metal parts was a nice yellow color with lots of flowers and the sun coming through the window was shining right on it making it nice and cozy-warm.
In fact, my mother had just finished ironing so the iron was still warm as well. A warm ironing board colored up like a bunch of flowers, a hot sun shining through a kitchen window and a still warm iron to lean against.
I mean, if you were a frog wouldn’t you think this was the perfect place for a nap?
I can tell you Fergus thought he was in heaven.
He climbed up to the ironing board (he was a great climber with his long fingers and toes) and stretched himself fully out on one big purple flower. The iron was right next to him and he propped his big head up against it so the warm iron kept his ears warm too. He closed his big yellow eyes, made a sort of purring sound (yes, frogs make a purring sound like cats when they’re really, really happy) and fell fast asleep in a second.
Well, it was a great place for a nap and Fergus was very quickly sound asleep. If you have ever watched a puppy sleep, sometimes they twitch and jerk their feet around like they are chasing a cat or running across a field.
They’re dreaming of course.
Fergus was a bit of a dreamer too and every now and then, he give a small kick and purr some more. Well, I think he must have been chasing the world’s biggest fly because he got more and more excited and all of a sudden, he gave an enormous kick with both feet and tried to make his highest jump ever. If he had been awake, he would have set an Olympic record for the high-jump.
Except he was asleep with his head against the warm iron.
Well, Fergus pushed so hard with his big strong legs that the iron wobbled back and forth a few times and then toppled right back down right on top of Fergus.
It squashed Fergus flatter than a pancake. Flatter than a tortilla. Flatter than a cd. Flatter than a … well, you get the picture.
Fergus was flat.
And it wasn’t a pretty sight. I won’t describe how flat a flat frog looks when he’s been ironed but let us simply agree that none of us ever wants to mess around with an iron and be that flat.
I picked him up and he was pretty well ironed out. I could hold him by one toe and the rest of him would stick straight out. He was really stiff and straight (well, so would you be if you’d just been ironed)
I had an idea to fix him up.
I went into my dad’s workshop and found a screwdriver with a nice wide blade. I also got my tire pump from my bike and took them both back into the kitchen.
Using the screwdriver, I was able to get Fergus’s mouth open a bit. I could tell he wasn’t too happy about having a screwdriver shoved between his teeth but I needed to get his mouth open. Then I slipped the end of the pump hose into his mouth and down his throat a bit. And I started pumping. With every push on the pump, I put another little bit of air into Fergus and he slowly, ever so slowly, started to expand again. He was getting rounder and rounder as I kept pumping and slowly he started to look more like a real frog than a green pancake.
The short story here is that I managed to pump him back up and he finally was able to spit the air pump hose out of his mouth to thank me for all my help. Instead of thanking me though, all I got was one huge burping belch because I had pumped him up a little too much and some of the air was rushing back out.
Fergus was so embarrassed that he jumped off the ironing board and hid for several days in the bottom of my toy box in his favourite hangout – the toy trains. But that’s another story for another night.
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