Annie Dillard wrote Heaven and Earth in Jest to describe her first encounter with a water bug. Dillard recounts her experience from a couple of summers ago as she was walking down the edge of an island. She felt amused when frogs would jump out of the water and splash back in. It took her some time to carefully recognize and distinguish the types of frogs that came in and out of the bank. Though many frogs were around her, Dillard couldn’t help but notice a small green frog, half in and half out of the water, staying in place. She stepped closer to the frog as it sat still and noticed it was a very small frog with wide, dull eyes. But once she looked up at him, the frog’s skin began to crumple and sag, his spirit vanishing from his eyes. His skin became so thin that his skull seemed to have …show more content…
When recounting her visit with the giant water bug, Dillard uses logos to provide facts about the giant water bug. To provide an explanation as to why the green frog seemed to “deflate,” it was because of the giant water bug. The giant water bug eats insects, tadpoles, fish, and frogs and has mighty forelegs that are hooked inward. Their forelegs are used to seize a “victim with these legs, hugs it tight, and paralyzes it with enzymes injected during a vicious bite” (Dillard 108). This could have explained what was happening to the small green frog that Dillard witnessed. When she saw the small frog, it was very still and did not move in the presence of a human being. After the giant water bugs bite, they “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” (Dillard 108). Unknowingly, when Dillard saw the green frog “deflating like a football,” the giant water bug was sucking out all of its