One fine summer evening, one of Heather’s loving brothers brought home a pretty young lady to meet Heather. If Heather had been a much more intelligent creature, she would have realised that her loving brother must have thought very highly of this young lady to risk showing her his rather eccentric sister. But Heather was not the most intelligent of young ladies and did not realise this.

The three young people chatted quite politely for a little while and all went surprisingly well until Heather’s loving brother had to get up and use the bathroom (even loving brothers need to use the toilet at times). This left Heather and the pretty young lady facing each other in the comfortable lounge room, with one of those awkward silences exerting it’s deadly pressure to say something. Eventually the pretty young lady succumbed first. “So you’re the lovely Heather your brother has been telling me so many nice things about,” said the young lady.

“You must be incredibly gullible then,” said Heather rather rudely, “because my brother is a terrible liar.”

“Whatever can you mean?” replied the pretty young lady, “Your brother cares for you very much.”

“Oh I know that. My brother certainly cares for me a great deal, but he is certainly under no illusions as to what I am like,” said Heather with unusual eloquence.

“Oh,” said the pretty young lady, and the uncomfortable silence rolled over them again. After what seemed a good many years, but was really a quite short time (Heather’s loving brothers never ever took too long in the bathroom), something quite odd happened. Heather was looking vacantly at the pretty young lady’s feet when she saw a cockroach crawl out from under the couch and onto the pretty young lady’s shoe. Heather was most embarrassed and hoped the pretty young lady would not notice. Inevitably however, the pretty young lady’s gaze came to rest on the cockroach. Then, in one swift, precise movement, she grabbed toe cockroach, stuffed it in her mouth and swallowed it whole. It was done with such efficiency and accuracy that Heather hardly had time to blink. She could hardly believe she’d seen it.

“Did you just eat a cockroach?” asked Heather, not being the most polite of young ladies.

“I do beg your pardon,” said the astonished young lady, “It sounded as if you just asked me if I ate a cockroach.” And then, only a second before Heather’s loving brother re-entered the room, the pretty young lady turned into a frog.

Even as a frog the pretty young lady was still quite pretty. She was one of those cute green tree froggy things with the big eyes that make environmentalists go all gooey. She sat in amongst her now far too large clothes and looked terribly pathetic.

“Heather! What have you done?” exclaimed Heather’s loving brother, “I mean, I can understand you feeling threatened by another female in my life, but you could at least talked to me about it before you turned her into a frog.”

“I didn’t do anything” retorted Heather, rather put out by the assumption that she was at fault, “she was just sitting there and suddenly she turned into a frog. I didn’t do anything to her. It must have had something to do with the cockroach she ate.”

“Heather!” exclaimed her loving brother again.

“Well she did,” said Heather quietly, but she could tell that her loving brother was quite upset. He was usually far more calm and collected in a crisis situation. Usually her loving brother knew exactly what to do and how to do it, but now he seemed perplexed and quite unsure of himself. “What are we going to do?” he asked dazedly.

“We could have a barbecue and then there’d be heaps of flies for her to eat,” suggested Heather.

This ridiculous remark seemed to bring Heather’s loving brother to his senses. “Frogs need to be kept wet,” he stated. “I’ll go get the old fish tank. You fold her clothes up and make sure she doesn’t go anywhere,” and he dashed off.

The pretty young frog did not seem to like Heather very much. When she approached to fold off the clothes, the frog hopped away in fright and Heather charged madly about the room, tripping over furniture and trying to make sure that the frog did not escape.

Fortunately Heather’s loving brother returned with a fish-tank kitted out for a frog before she could do any serious injury to her self. His presence in the room helped Heather to stop panicking and the frog jumped onto his shoulder, shivering.

“Maybe you should try kissing her,” suggested Heather.

“Don’t be silly,” responded her brother patiently, “That’s only for princes. Besides, it wouldn’t be proper.

We’ll just have to take her back to her parent’s house and explain what happened. They may have some idea of what to do.”

“What? You’re going to front up on their doorstep and say ‘I’m terribly sorry, but your daughter appears to have turned into a frog,’ said Heather with extreme sarcasm.

“Of course,” replied her loving brother, appearing to miss the sarcasm entirely. “Now lets get going. She seems happy on my shoulder for the moment so I won’t put her in the aquarium just yet.”

And so, they set off. As soon as Heather’s loving brother stepped out into the moonlight however, he suddenly found that he had a pretty, but very naked young lady clinging to his shoulder. Being a very considerate young man, he averted his eyes instantly.

“I’ll go get your clothes,” said Heather quickly.

“No. You stay here,” said her loving brother, and explained to the pretty young lady that her clothes were on the couch inside, if she would care to let herself in and get dressed. All the while staring intently at something on the other side of the road.

Soon enough, the pretty young lady was fully dressed and they were all sitting in the barbecue area out the back. “It’s safe out in the moonlight,” explained the young lady, “it seems to stop me from changing somehow.”

“Are you some kind of werefrog?” asked Heather

“You could say that, except that moonlight actually stops me from changing, unlike werewolves. You see, I only change when I think about mashed potatoes. I’m really sorry, but you sister here reminded me so much of mashed potatoes that I just couldn’t help myself. She just has this mashed-potatoeness about her that’s completely overpowering.”

Heather’s brother knew exactly what she meant, but didn’t want to say anything in front of Heather. Instead, suggested that Heather and the pretty young lady should only meet in the moonlight until such time as the pretty young lady could manage to see Heather without thinking of potato products of any kind.

With such pertinent precautions in place, everyone was all set to live happily ever after until the pretty young lady fell madly in love with a young man who turned into a newt every time he thought of boiled cabbage. And so Heather’s loving brother was dumped like a sack of rotting garbage, and he was very sad. But not for too long.

THE END.