Kermit Goes Kerplunk!
Orlando, Florida - There have been dozens of stories of frogs falling from the sky during heavy rain, but I think this is a first: Somebody actually catching the ordeal on
videotape. On the evening of July 6, Crystal and Rod Vermeer were
vacationing here in "sunny" Florida. At their hotel on the property of a
prominent resort destination (which will remain nameless), Rod was trying to
document their Florida "vacation," a rain-soaked several days spent inside a
hotel for their friends back home in Seattle.
The amphibious downpour did not apparently take much time, as evidenced on
the tape. "It's hard to say, actually," says Rod. "I was manning the video
camera, and I could hear the rain pouring down, and suddenly it seemed like
it was really raining hard. Crystal was being funny and making faces, and
she turned around and said something about frogs. I thought she was joking,
but when I went over and looked, they were everywhere."
Frog Falls are a more common phenomenon than is commonly believed. Often
they happen in crowded city areas in such a way as to make hoaxing an
unlikely explanation. Throughout the years, people have often experienced
falls of "pink" albino frogs, immature tadpoles, and common frogs. How they
become airborne is a mystery, and the only vital theory is that
hurricane-force winds pull them into the atmosphere only to drop them,
alive, some time later. Though this theory is not widely accepted as
plausible, none better has been proposed.
In the case of the Orlando Frog Fall (OFF), the frogs were larger than
normal. They appear to be a local strain of tree frogs, measuring
approximately 1 1/2 inches to three inches long. The size of the frogs
brings into question once again how they could have made the journey, how
they could have survived the fall, and from where specifically they came. Science may never know. Rod said "a few minutes after the fall, they scattered
into the swampy area. It'd been a long day and I didn't feel like handling
frogs."
sources
Interview with Rod and Crystal Vermeer October 8, 1999
"Falling Frogs," Strange Facts of the Unknown World, Published in 1978 by
Register Press
Video and Photo Courtesy of Rod Vermeer