LEADER-POST (Regina, Saskatchewan) 14 August 10 Frog mating rituals and meteorology (Ron Petrie)
News Item: Farmers in a parched district of northern Bangladesh are marrying off frogs in a desperate bid to bring on monsoon rains and protect their crops. The country suffered its driest July in decades, prompting farmers to turn to the centuries-old rainmaking ritual. At one of the ceremonies, 300 villagers attended in their best clothes. -- Agence France-Presse
Finally. A ray of hope.
Assuming the opposite of Bangladeshi weather lore holds true, that single and divorced frogs prevent rain, the only question left is whether we in Saskatchewan are that desperate to take action. I suspect the answer this summer rises as a single chorus of voices, be they parkland or prairie, east, west or south, in one resounding word: "Glub."
That would be a yes.
Oh, a few skeptics likely remain. Not to disparage the religious beliefs of any culture, but ours is a technologically advanced western society, they'd argue, in which science long ago separated weather fact from superstition. We know full well the way to control our climate is not by marrying off amphibians. It is by switching to curly lightbulbs.
Yet there's no denying what our eyes see. Everywhere in soggy Saskatchewan are culprit frogs -- big frogs, little frogs and frogs that, when you hold them up by their front legs for a rear view, have no discernible buttocks, just a wrinkled sag, like me in my relaxed-fit blue jeans, indicating old-married-guy frogs.
Too late for them. Future monsoons could be prevented, however, by intervening now before young frogs in love take their own altar vows, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until they croak.
Unfortunately, most so-called "frog-mating" research concerns itself only with the honeymoon ritual, which is called "amplexus." The male frog grasps the female's frog front legs from behind and -- bahwn chicka wah-wah -- eggs are fertilized in the water. Says here in my encyclopedia that male frogs often perform amplexus on "other species too large for food" or "any pliable object," sometimes for hours on end.
So we're not that different, we humans and frogs.
Inter-species mating by guy frogs is well-documented in the only published account of a frog wedding, that of 20th-century folksinger-scientist Burl Ives, who observed: "Frog went a-courtin' and he did ride, uh-huh, uh-huh ... He rode up to Miss Mousie's door, uh-uh, uh-huh." Ives went on to note that after the marriage proposal there was a HUGE argument about where to hold the reception and what to serve. (Ives double-checked and confirmed every one of the scientific observations, noting on each: "Uh-huh, uh-huh." When Frog and Miss Mousie eventually settled on way down yonder in the hollow tree, with fried mosquito and black-eyed pea, the flyin' moth had the damn gall to bring her own table cloth, the juney bug her own water jug, and that's not all. The bubbly bee got all liquoured up and danced a jig with the broken black flea, the little black tick ate so much that it made her sick and the big black snake devoured the wedding cake -- in short, the entire Frog-Mousie reception was a disaster, absolutely ruined, all because the couple made the common wedding planning error of inviting guests.
As I said, we're not so different, humans and frogs.
Marrying off frogs with mice would only exacerbate Saskatchewan's climate, anyway. Those of you who have been following the news this week will know that in a rare moment of contrition, we in media confessed that, OK, so, anyway, that whole H1N1 mass-panic vaccination deal last year? A tad unnecessary, as it turned out, our bad, so sorry. Also, this just in: Saskatchewan mice are pooping deadly hantavirus! Hybrid frog-mouse offspring, pooping plague and bringing more monsoons, is a pandemic beyond even the media's ability to exaggerate.
Our secret weapon has to be The Other Frog, the bimbo frog who comes between paired frogs, preventing marriage and breaking engagements. Frogs all look the same, though, and have no esthetic reason for infidelity. No married frog ever did a double-take across the creek and thought to himself, "Yowza! Check out that pliable object!"
So we need an undercover babe frog, just one, to flirt like a complete floozie and spread romantic discord on our behalf. Extending the reverse theory of Bangladeshi rainmaking to fables, if a homely frog kissed by a fair maiden turns into a handsome prince, why wouldn't the opposite hold true, that a fair maiden kissed by some total gomer turns into a hottie frog?
A total gomer Saskatchewan already has.
Auditions are now open for fair maiden.
Frog mating rituals and meteorology