Building Airplanes

 

        My editor has sent me on some strange assignments, but last month was a doosey.  I had to interview a frog that worked down at the airplane factory.

        How will I know which frog it is, I asked.

        “He dresses like Jimmy Buffet.”

        That shouldn’t be too difficult to find I said.

        Anyway, I finally found him in a little neighborhood bar, called The Pond.  He was sitting on a barstool having a mug of beer.

        With my pen and notebook in hand, I sat on the barstool next to him and asked if I could ask him a few questions for the local paper.

        He gave me a quick glance but didn’t say anything, so I just started.  Why the sandals?

        His left eye looked at me and then he said, “Have you ever tried to tie shoes that have laces using webbed toes?”

        Well, he had me there.  Not sure how I’d tie a knot using webbed toes.

        What about the straw hat.  I see you wear a Hawaiian shirt, but didn’t Jimmy Buffet wear a baseball cap?

        “I find that with the wide brim of this hat I don’t have to bother with sunscreen.”

        Again, I found that to be a reasonable answer, so I thought I’d just get to it.

        They tell me you help to build airplanes.  What is it you actually do?

        Again, with his left eye he looked at me like I was some kind of moron.  Then he said,

        “Rivet.”

        I couldn’t tell if this guy was just having fun with me or what, but I continued.

        I noticed all the planes in the hangers are pulled straight in.  If they don’t have reverse, how do you get them out of there.

        Before he answered me, he flicked his long tongue towards the bowl of snails that sat on the bar.  Then I noticed it wasn’t a snail that he had snatched up, but a fly that had landed on the snails.  He munched it up and then took another sip from his mug of beer.   After a brief moment he said…

 

        “Toad.”