Ninja frog.

Maybe some of you thought that Green Ninja: Year of the Frog was just an amusing Nitrome game, a typical waste of time.

You'd be wrong. 

And you'd find out too late.

This guy was right next to my new pup the other day and neither of us spotted him--at first. But as someone who mastered the game, I was a bit more alert than my puppy, despite his superhuman nose and low-to-the-ground proximity. It was I who whipped out my phone and caught the reptile unaware. The puppy couldn't do that. Hell, he probably doesn't even have a cool phone like me. He'd just chew it anyway.

If he did, he too may have mastered the challenge of the Green Ninja, who can stick to walls but can only leap in a straight line.

Knowing that, I simply stayed at a diagonal to the one on my lawn, so he could not leap on me. I didn't want to get one of those ninja kicks to the face that they do, or worse, have him stuck to my shirt.

I've learned a lot of things from Nitrome over the years. Useful things, like what happens when ice cream goes bad, or how pirates deal with crabs, or how to deal with toxic waste, or how a moon made of cheese can escape alien kidnappers. So the wiles of frog ninjas are just part of my skill set now.