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Myths
RAINING FROGS!!!
Throughout history, there have been tales of raining frogs. These stories, as crazy as they may seem, are actually real events! From Biblical tales of Egyptian storms to British towns suddenly finding themselves covered with frogs falling from the sky, such events are caused when a wind storm passes over a pond or lake teaming with frogs, picking them up and dumping them elsewhere!
One recent story, from the Press Democrat news services, was in June of 1997. "CULIACAN, Mexico- It rained toads in the town of Villa Angel Flores.
A small tornado whirled up a cluster of toads from a local body of water Saturday night and dropped them all the town in the Pacific coast state of Sineloa, the newspaper El Debate reported Tuesday.
Motorists reported the amphibians dropping from the sky around 11 p.m."
But these stories are not uncommon - there was a story as recently as June of 2005 when a Belgrade paper reported a similar incident in Serbia.
Thousands of tiny frogs rained on a town in north-western Serbia, Belgrade daily Blic reported on Tuesday. Strong winds brought storm clouds over Odzaci, 120km north-west of Belgrade, on Sunday afternoon, but instead of rain, down came the tiny amphibians, witnesses said.
"I saw countless frogs fall from the sky," said Odzaci resident Aleksandar Ciric. The frogs, different from those usually seen in the area, survived the fall and hopped around in search of water. Belgrade climatologist Slavisa Ignjatovic described the phenomenon as "not very unusual". "A wind resembling a tornado can suck in anything light enough from the surface or shallow water. Usually it's just dust, but sometimes also larger objects," Ignjatovic told Blic. - Sapa-DPA
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.................................................. FROGS AND WEATHER
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Frogs have been associated with weather in a lot of ancient cultures. I guess this really makes a lot of sense if you consider that they tend to make a lot of noise before rain storms.
..........Some Australian aborigines and Native American groups believed that frogs were the bringers of rain.
..........In India, frogs were believed to personify thunder in the sky. Even the word for "frog" also meant "cloud" in Sanskrit!
..........In China, they see the "TOAD", not the "man" of the moon. The toad is also considered "one of the five poisons of yin."
..........They say that eclipses happen when the "toad in the moon" tries to swallow the moon itself!
......................................... FROGS AND LUCK
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Sometimes, cultures associated frogs with good and bad fortune.
..........In Japan, frogs are the symbols of Good Luck. One myth I read dealt with the idea that bullfrogs are descended from a great ancestor who could suck all the mosquitoes out of a whole room in a single breath!
..........Some myths are less favoring to frogs and toads. Some folklorists* have claimed that "If the first frog that you see in the spring is sitting on dry ground, it signifies that during the same year you will shed as many tears as the frog would require to swim away in." If, on the other hand, the first frog of spring jumps into the water, you'll experience misfortune all year! However, if the springs' first "hoptoad" come jumping in your direction, you will have many friends; if it jumps away from you, you will lose some.(sounds to me like it's best not to run into the first spring frog!)
.......................................................... FROGS AND WARTS
Some say that you get warts from touching frogs and toads.
..........You get warts from human viruses, not from frogs and toads! Frogs have slimy skin to stay moist when it is dry, and toads have bumpy skin to help camouflage them in their habitat. Some frogs and toads have paratoidal glands which secrete poisons as protection which can cause skin irritations and may be poisonous to some species of animals, but warts have nothing at all to do with the frogs themselves!
................................ FROGS AND THE FRENCH
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The French and the Frogs For some reason, the French have been given the nickname Frogs...There are many different theories about how this came to be...
..........The story I had always heard was that the nickname dates waaay back to sometime around the 18th century, when Paris was surrounded by many swamps...The French nobility that would visit Versailles apparently tended to refer to Parisians as frogs because of the swampy surroundings...and only later did the term get picked up to describe the French in general.
..........Another story I've heard was that American soldiers adopted the nickname for the French during the World War II because they ate frog legs and hid well when camouflaged.
..........I've also heard that a frog used to be on the French Flag, before the Fleurs de Lis was adopted when King Clovis took the throne....
..........In fact, there are so many stories....I don't think anyone really knows for sure...
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Frogs
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