With help from the Rainforest Alliance, a brave young Costa Rican tree frog is traveling around the world to make new friends and find out what humans are doing to help save her home. This is the first in a series of five weekly dispatches about her experiences.
Some humans are so easy to love. Case in point: my Jeannine. She’s young, beautiful and a good writer, with discerning tastes in literature. (Forget Jane Austen, she likes Ahmadou Kourouma). Plus, Jeannine gets this whole thing about cattle ranching destroying the Amazon.
I drift into a Brooklyn reverie as I cling to one of her fishtail braids. It’s Bushwick Open Studios time again and the streets are filled with artists and performers.
Although we’re both famished, she smartly pedals past the burger joints and taco trucks. We ride until Jeannine is lured by a sandwich board promising locally grown tomatoes from a nearby rooftop farm.
After ordering the farro and microgreens salad topped with a poached quail egg, Jeannine’s finger glides over the drinks, freezing over “soy latte”.
“Noooooo!” I yell, leaping from braid to braid. “Don’t you know soybean farms are one of the biggest drivers of deforestation in the Amazon? That only a fraction of the global supply is sustainably harvested? And... and....”
She quickly banishes my fears with a smile as her finger drops down one more line. “I’ll have a single-origin shade-grown cold-brew dark-roast coffee please,” she said.
I look back at the menu, where I now see my own likeness emblazoned in green ink. “Whew!” I think. “Can’t wait to tell my friends back in the tropics that we have a follower here in Brooklyn.”
Content on this page is provided by the Rainforest Alliance, supporter of the Vital Signs platform.
