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Public Communications and Inquiries Management Office NASA Headquarters Suite 5K39 Washington, D.C. 20546-0001
June 11, 2007
Dear NASA,
After 12 happy years, my pet bullfrog finally bit the bullet. I live near a shooting range and he choked on a bullet casing and died. I tried doing some frog CPR on him, but his body lay lifeless in the rain. Immediately afterward I phoned my doctor. “Charles is unconscious! Please come quickly!” I yelled into the receiver of my cellular communications device. But Dr. Nielsen doesn’t work on frogs, he told me, referring to himself in the third person. I knelt in the mud and raised my arms to the sky, yelling “WHYYYYY?!,” feeling the bitter drops of precipitation fall onto my tongue as if water were coming from the clouds.
In 1995 I found Charles, then a tadpole, lying upside-down in a puddle. His mother had abandoned him and he was left for dead. I rescued the poor bullfrog, nursed him to health, and raised him to be a caring, responsible adult bullfrog. Late into the night, when the stars dotted the sky as if God had sneezed white paint into space, I would talk to Charles about the world, about politics, about cheese. He would listen contently as he ate his bowl of insects. There was a misty gleam in his eyes.
I am writing to you today to find out how I could send Charles’ remains into space. He was an avid space lover and I think the final frontier is an appropriate resting place for this friend of mine. In 1970, you launched two bullfrogs into orbit with the Orbiting Frog Otolith program; this would be a similar endeavor, but this time a bullfrog life-support system would not be necessary. Please let me know the possibility of this happening and the costs involved. Charles may have been a bullfrog, but he was my best (and only) friend. Please, share your condolences with our dear departed amphibian.
Sincerely,
Kevin Dickinson |
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