Sworn Affidavit
Sworn statement of Mrs. Eudora Hopkins, taken at her home pad on the shallow east shelf, entered into file PP-08-21-9420. The witness declined a chair and testified standing, on principle.
I have lived one pad over from PeePoo for fourteen seasons, and in fourteen seasons that frog has never once taken a thing that wasn't his. What he does take is my recycling out. Unasked. Before dawn. I only know it's him because I stayed up one night to catch the culprit, and the culprit was PeePoo, quietly re-stacking my reeds by size so the wind wouldn't scatter them. Then he folded my cattails. A guilty frog does not fold another frog's cattails.
On the night the prosecution keeps circling — the night of the 3:47 timestamp — I was awake with a bad knee, as I often am, watching the water. PeePoo's pad was dark and still. His porch lantern was out, which it only is when he's off admiring something small and harmless three ponds over. He does that. He calls it 'gnat hours.' I have teased him about it for a decade. It is the least criminal hobby in the entire marsh.
Now. I have also, over those same fourteen seasons, met the other one. The identical one. I will not say his name because my lawyer, who is also PeePoo's lawyer, told me not to, and because frankly the name curdles the pondwater. But I will say this: he came to borrow sugar once and left with my good ladle, and I never saw the ladle again. Same face. Opposite frog. You learn to tell them apart by what goes missing after they visit.
So when they tell me PeePoo forged seventeen checks at a quarter to four in the morning, I say: with what tongue? I have watched that frog's tongue for fourteen seasons and it lies flat and honest as a lily. It does not curl. The curl belongs to the ladle-thief. Everyone on the east shelf knows it. We just weren't asked until now.