Hey birds, here are cookies!

Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad stories came up in my attempt to describe my recurring dream of break-dancing frogs. Our parents read us those stories countless times when we were kids, and one line from them became a family catchphrase. In Frog and Toad Together, Frog and Toad bake some cookies that are so delicious that they lack the will power to stop eating them. They try various ways of forcing themselves to stop, such as putting the cookies high up out of their reach, but nothing works. In the end, Frog takes the cookies outside and shouts, "Hey birds, here are cookies!" Birds come and eat up all the cookies, and Frog comments that now that the temptation is gone, he and Toad "have lots and lots of will power."

That's really the only Frog and Toad story I have any clear memory of. To me, Frog and Toad are synonymous with "Hey birds, here are cookies!"

In a comment, William Wright connects my break-dancing frogs with Gregor the Stymph (skeletal bird-monster) and Odessa "Sally" Grigorievna the vulture. Both are humans who have been transformed into animals. Gregor is a prince who doesn't want to be called a prince, and Odessa Grigorievna resists being called Sally, which means "princess." The usual animal for princes to be transformed into is of course the frog. (My 2021 post "The Emperor's orb" begins with birds of prey and ends with the Frog Prince.) I think the stereotypically "Russian" garb of my break-dancing frogs (black and white Adidas tracksuits) also suggests a connection with this vulture who is actually a Russian woman.

The Odessa Grigorievna dream begins with my seeing "in the distance some kind of large carcass with carrion birds flocking around it." That, combined with the Frog and Toad story, made me think of this passage from the Book of Revelation:

And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great (Rev. 19:17-18).

Notice how close Arnold Lobel comes to the biblical language of "cried with a loud voice":

He shouted in a loud voice, "HEY BIRDS, HERE ARE COOKIES!"

Birds came from everywhere.

The main difference of course is that Frog and Toad's birds eat baked goods, while John's eat human flesh. However, there is biblical precedent for equating the two:

When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was good, he said unto Joseph, I also was in my dream, and, behold, I had three white baskets on my head: And in the uppermost basket there was of all manner of bakemeats for Pharaoh; and the birds did eat them out of the basket upon my head.

And Joseph answered and said, This is the interpretation thereof: The three baskets are three days: Yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thy head from off thee, and shall hang thee on a tree; and the birds shall eat thy flesh from off thee (Gen. 40:17-19).

I know that's kind of a dark direction to go with something as charming as Frog and Toad, but it does seem to be what the sync fairies have in mind.

It has not escaped my notice that both cookie and cake (Toad plans to bake a cake after the cookies are gone) suggest the Egyptian frog-god Kek, who is also called Kekui. Kek has been explicitly connected with cake in memes -- e.g. forty keks and topkek. Topkek is particularly interesting, since Pharaoh's baker specifies that his cakes were "in the uppermost basket."