"
The frog's fear is rendered into physical action. This gives 'respect' to the frog, as Dillard does not describe the frog's feelings, which she cannot really know, as she just is observing the creature. Her metaphors are clearly in the language of a human being and the vocabulary reference of a human being. A frog would not describe himself like "a deflating football" or "a pricked balloon."
Dillard, still not sure of what is happening: "watched the taut, glistening skin on his shoulders ruck, and rumple, and fall." Ruck and rumple uses alliteration to create a sense of hard, consonant violence. The frog's fear and its physical effect upon the frog affect the interior life of the observer. Her similes begin to take on an ugliness, as the frog's skin "lay in floating folds like bright scum on top of the water," evoking both filth and the frog's natural environment. Nature is ugly as well as beautiful, charming, and pacific, and soon Dillard: "gaped, bewildered, appalled" at what she saw.
Nature's real ugliness injects itself into the homespun narratives about frogs. A lower life form begins to devour a higher life form....
The giant water bug that the author had only read about and appreciated in an academic sense rears its ugly head. She knows it "eats insects, tadpoles, fish, and frogs." But suddenly its presence injects drama into the descriptive passage. Now the fear and ominous nature of the passage's description of the frog's skin, its fear, and the occasional use of biological vocabulary becomes all comes together. The bug strikes, in a flurry of pure verbs and motions: "its grasping forelegs are mighty and hooked inward." Dillard knows such a bug "seizes a victim...hugs it tight, and paralyzes it." The biologist in Dillard again takes over, she notes it kills "with enzymes injected during a vicious bite...through the puncture shoot the poisons that dissolve the victim's muscles and bones and organs -- all but the skin -- and through it the giant water bug sucks out the victim's body, reduced to a juice. This event is quite common in warm fresh water."
But Dillard is not just a scientist, she also feels deeply about what she has seen. The action literally winds the author: "I stood up and brushed the knees of my pants. I couldn't catch my breath."
