Two weeks ago, I wrote about a 1920 story in the New York Herald that reported on a giant frog discovered 114 feet underground in an ochre mine in Forestdale in 1865.
Even in 1920, it was widely known that glaciers once covered all of New England. Ice blanketed the land in places to a depth of almost 2 miles. People speculated: could this frog have gone to sleep in a pre-ice age swamp only to be buried, frozen, and roused from sleep in a post-glacial meadow surrounded by the miners who dug him up? (I assume “him” is the appropriate pronoun, since the paper reported that the frog bellowed so loudly that its voice could be heard for miles around, and males are the noisier frog gender.) This wouldn’t be much more surprising than finding a whale skeleton in Vermont, which happened quite conclusively in 1849 while a railroad line was being built in Charlotte.
Mind you, this account was published in a newspaper but it hardly fit the category of news. The Lazarus-like frog was unearthed more than half a century before the article appeared. The source of the article was Frank Rogers, then of Forestdale. Frank informed a reporter that he was 15 years old in 1865 as he personally watched miners uncover the frog, which soon revived. Why did the story itself hibernate for over five decades before Mr. Rogers dug it up and revived it?
It is worth noting that in early New England, buried frog stories were not uncommon. According to Joe Citro’s “Weird New England,” stories of live frogs being uncovered far underground were recorded in 1822 in Bridgewater, and in 1786 and 1807 in Burlington. In “A Natural and Civil History of Vermont,” Samuel Williams reports that, “There are several accounts in natural history, of toads being found in the hearts of trees, and in solid rocks, wholly inclosed, and shut up from the air, and all appearances of food; and being taken out alive, of such situations.” Williams goes on to cite frogs found alive five feet underground in Castleton in 1779, nine feet underground in Windsor in 1790, and 25-30 feet underground in Burlington in 1788.
So how likely is it for frogs to survive years or decades or centuries underground? I checked with Jim Andrews of Salisbury. Jim is the chair of the Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Scientific Advisory Group. He said biologists generally reject stories of frogs found alive in sealed rocks or buried for decades due to a lack of controlled, verifiable evidence and the fact that amphibians require at least some moisture and oxygen and cannot sustain energy reserves for decades without replenishment.
Jim offered a number of alternative explanations for seemingly deeply buried frogs. These included that perhaps the frog was on the move at night and fell into a hole that was partially dug, the frog was overwintering in some underground rivulet that he reached from the surface, and/or the frog was originally in much shallower soil along the side of the hole and was disturbed and fell into the hole. But if you’re anything like me, the desire to believe in ancient, buried giant frogs may persist in some dark recess of your mind.
In a fortnight I’ll explore how the mining of ochre came to happen in Brandon, and what ochre is anyway.
Interested in local natural history? Brandon Free Public Library will host a presentation Thursday, March 26, at 6 p.m. titled “They Came from Away: From Woolly Mammoths to Woolly Adelgids, a Brief History of Vermont Migrants.” More information on this event here.
