As a young science journalist, my first reporting assignment consisted of finding out how to kill my pet frog.
I’m not a sadist. Let me explain.
To tell the story of Friggles the frog, I have to go back to my lonely childhood. I had no siblings and my parents both worked long hours, so for years, I begged them—begged—for a pet. Any pet.
Finally, when I was in elementary school, they caved, and we joined the majority of U.S. households with at least one pet. But my parents didn’t take me to a shelter or breeder. We went to a toy store, where my mother handed over a few dollars for a Grow-A-Frog. We bought a tank and some supplies, and in a few weeks, a box arrived at our house outside Philadelphia (addressed to me!). Inside was a tadpole, a couple of inches long, squirming against the sides of a small, clear bag filled with water.
Looking back, I see how unusual my first pet experience was. But my parents were probably unphased—my dad, for instance, grew up with a rabbit that shared his bed, and a parakeet that perched on his bow while he practiced the violin. To him, a mail-order tadpole was no big thing.
Plus, the Grow-A-Frog was educational—over time, the tadpole would transform, sprout little arms and legs, and teach me the amazing process of metamorphosis. For some kids, it could spark a lifelong fascination with nature’s wonders; it certainly did for me, and likely inspired my decision to write about science for a living. But even pets that don’t put kids on a career path can make a big difference in their lives.
Initially, it looked like my first experience with the wonders of nature would be short-lived: the squirmy tadpole I was so excited to nurture into adulthood died soon after it arrived. Its replacement was dead on arrival; I can still remember the look of its lifeless body bobbing in the water.
Livid, my mother got on the phone with the company, and told them that they had traumatized her only child (an exaggeration) and they needed to send us their healthiest frog, immediately. That’s when Friggles arrived, and I got to experience the metamorphosis I had been promised.
Over time, Friggles’s body went from a bulb with a clear, quivery tail to a streamlined, underwater frog, sprouting little arms and legs with black nails. I spent hours watching him, observing how he spent his days. Mostly, he lay on the floor of his tank, occasionally bobbing to the surface for air, and rarely sprinting in circles along the perimeter in bursts of activity, then floating calmly back to the bottom. He sang for the first time on Christmas morning, a low, continuous vibration. My parents and I tried to guess why and when he would again.
Earlier this year, I reached out to a representative of the company, which is still in business, who told me Friggles was most likely an African clawed frog, which can live up to 15 years. Today, they sell smaller species from the clawed frog family known as Pipidae, which the rep said has an average lifespan of 5 years.
Friggles made my childhood more enjoyable. Research shows that pets, even the non-furry kind, may have health benefits, such as lowering levels of a stress hormone known as cortisol, reducing blood pressure, improving mood, and curbing loneliness [1]. Owning a pet may even change your gut microbiota [2].
My mother and I spent many years reaping the benefits of taking care of an aquatic species, dropping thousands of pellets into Friggles’s tank. I was always too nervous to clean his water, so once a month, my mother bravely scooped him out and scrubbed away the scum and stink. She was determined to keep him happy, and he was determined to survive. Sometimes his slimy body would slip through her fingers and drop several feet onto the floor, or even down the garbage disposal. She just scooped him back up, and all was well.
I never stopped asking for pets, and Friggles eventually met a rabbit, a fish, two birds, two dogs, and two cats.
But they say you never forget your first, and Friggles often stole the show. He became the unofficial mascot of our household, and my mother began adding frog tchotchkes to the interior and exterior decor. He won a pet contest at my school (in the “miscellaneous” category). He was the subject of many running jokes, as my dad imitated the shocked Grow-A-Frog employees who couldn’t believe my mom was calling again to order more food for the same animal. We marked Friggles’s birthday on the calendar; one year, we considered throwing him a surprise party. Friends, relatives, even my teachers were fascinated by him. “How’s Friggles?” they would ask. “Is he still alive?”
He saw me through elementary, middle, and high school, and sent me off to college in Montreal. There, I studied animals (biology) and writing (English), and upon graduation got a job as a medical writer. I was excited to be getting paid to write about science, but wasn’t overly passionate about the job itself.
One day, my mother called me at work, something she never did. “Friggles is sick,” she told me. Apparently, his body was swelling up; she said he looked like a frog balloon with a tiny head, little arms and legs. The vet she used for our other animals didn’t know about frogs and refused to euthanize him. “I need help,” my mother said.
This was 1998, when the internet did not offer the wealth of information that it does now. And this was Friggles—I didn’t trust the online ramblings of someone who may not have known what they were talking about.
So I picked up the phone and started making calls. I found amphibian experts who confirmed that Friggles was likely on his way out, but didn’t know how best to humanely put him down. Each person referred me to someone else. And after a few tries, I found someone who knew what to do: put Friggles in a small cup of water, place him in the refrigerator for a set period of time, then transfer him to the freezer. The cold of the refrigerator would slow his bodily functions in a painless way that would feel like falling asleep, the expert reassured me; the freezer would kill him, but he wouldn’t feel a thing.
Soon after that, I sat on the phone with my mother, talking her through the process. She wanted me there for support when she moved him, with tears in her eyes, from the refrigerator to the freezer. “I can’t believe it’s over,” she said. (Not everyone felt the loss so deeply: my dad was upstairs playing video games.)
On the day he died, Friggles was 18 years old.
Yes, we killed him. But I enjoyed figuring out how to do it in a (hopefully) compassionate way. At my medical writing job, I spent days reviewing anatomy and physiology textbooks, thinking of new ways to describe something that had been described a million times before: the human cardiovascular system. When Friggles got sick, there was no textbook to tell us how to help. Instead, I had to find out the information myself, call experts in the field, and ask them questions. Scientists helped me better understand the organism I’d spent my childhood observing and wondering about. They explained what the cold of the fridge and freezer would likely do to his physiology.
It was my first taste of journalism, and I was hooked.
Shortly after Friggles died, I applied to a master’s degree program in science journalism. Now, I regularly call experts in all different fields who tell me about what they’ve spent their lives wondering about and observing. It is a privilege to talk to scientists about cutting-edge ideas and results not yet in textbooks. I hope my reporting has offered readers answers to their questions, and perhaps some of the comfort my first foray into journalism gave me and my mom.
In 2019, I took my preschool-aged daughter to our local garden store, where we picked out five chirping balls of fluff that became our chickens. Over the next few months, she watched them grow crowns and shed their fluff for feathers, and heard their “cheeps” mature into “clucks.” When one died after only a couple of days, we buried her in the backyard under a painted rock.
Chickens aren’t friendly like dogs and cats, but they’re fun to look at. My daughter and I watch them circle their pen, I explain to her about “pecking order,” and we discuss who is in charge when, since the hierarchy seems to be ever-changing. We observe, make hypotheses, and continue observing to see if our ideas hold up. And the eggs are delicious.
She and I also talk about Friggles, 20 years after his death. We talk more about my mom, who died a few years after Friggles. I tell my daughter about how angry my mom got when we kept receiving sick tadpoles, and how she made sure I got a healthy frog. He was so healthy, she ended up having to take care of him for longer than anyone expected. I hope my daughter sees what I see: that the world is full of amazing creatures that can surprise and inspire us, and that good parents will do whatever they can to give their kids happy, interesting lives.
[1] “The Power of Pets.” NIH News in Health, February 2018.
[2] Kates, Ashley E., et al. “Household Pet Ownership and the Microbial Diversity of the Human Gut Microbiota.” Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, vol. 10, 2020. Accessed 21 July, 2021.
Alison McCook is a writer living outside Philadelphia. She has spent most of her career in science journalism, writing and editing articles about new research and what it means. Her work has appeared in publications including Reuters, Scientific American, Undark, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Knowable, Nature, and Science. She spent several years as the editor of Retraction Watch, conducting investigative journalism that focused on academia, publishing, and scientific misconduct. She has four chickens and a needy cat.
Cite This Essay
McCook, Alison. “Friggles the Frog.” Biodesigned: Issue 8, 22 July, 2021. Accessed [month, day, year].
