A bad hop

I know this girl, a brainy, beautiful biologist-type, who eschews violence toward other living things. Unless it's a specimen destined for scientific study. Or the occasional fish for the frying pan. Or a cockroach.

Okay, so maybe she's not the Mahatma Gandhi of the natural world. But she is the kind of person who will stop and move a turtle across the road.

A couple of months ago, driving through the Everglades, she did just that. A few miles down the road a large bullfrog blindly leaped under her moving tire, emitting a loud "pop" as it expired.

She was a bit distressed. The frog, she said, had "taken a bad hop."

The phrase kind of caught-on, and now it's shorthand for any "oops ..." or "d-oh!" moment.

Sometimes the bad hops come so quickly one on the heels of the other that I just want to hunker-down and stop hopping altogether.

Of course, sometimes I leap right into something really cool. A tasty dragonfly. A book deal. Maybe a winsome young lady bullfrog who has responded to my drainage-ditch croaking.

It happens.

Anyhow, here's wishing you plenty of good hops in the New Year.