She was a princess of mud. But you’d never know it by asking her. She lorded it over her small pond as if it were an ocean. The kindly bullfrog tolerated her. He needed her for something or other, and who was too wrapped up in his own concerns to mind much what she did on her own time.
The mudpool had once been a shining clear pool. The Princess had promised the bullfrog she coudl tuen it into a large pond and even a lake and someday an ocean if he only trusted her. And so he did and she brought in gallons of water and plants and dirt and built up a arther impressive looking pond.
But she didn’t know much about ponds or pools. She had experience with puddles and while she made it sound slike puddles were some of th emost complex and difficult things ever, they still didn’t prepare you for the hot summer days in a pond.
And it showed. First she drove out some of the animals she didn’t like. Some of these were pests of course, and so nobody minded at first. Then she began to distract th ebullfrog from his duties overseeing the pond and took them for herself. As the water evaporated in the hot sun and more an dmore animals left, she declared that they were th wrong sort of animals, and began to blame those who were left for the evaporating water.
She hired outsiders to bring in small buckets of water and then claimed she had made the rain. Buit it still wasn’t enough. Eventually she blamed the frogs, who had largely kept to themselves, for using up too much water. She tried to get rid of one or two of the frogs, hoping that would ease the problem, but the frogs weren’t drinking the water. It was the sun. But she couldn’t admit it was the sun or she would have looked at fault.
So she ran off more animals, and began to declare the mud that was left a good thing. She said mud was always the goal and if you didn’t like mud, you were missing the point of life. The Bullfrog wallowed in the mud with her. The other animals who remained could barely watch.
Eventually even the patient frogs left, adn the bullfrog and the Princess were left alone in the mud which quickly began to turn to hard cracked earth. And as the bullfrog began to gasp and demand water, the Princess assured him that everything was exactly as she had planned. The bullfrog began to object but it was too late. There was nobody left to object to anymore.
