Old Pueblo Almanac

It was midsummer in the late 1960s. I was a Senior Counselor at a Summer Camp (“The Day Camp With the Away Camp Atmosphere”) on the East side of Tucson. The weather had been blistering hot. The Monsoon clouds had started building the week before, but no rain, adding the insult of humidity to the injury of 100+ degree heat. The Camp had just opened the year before; there was no air conditioning, so we took the kids to the newly built swimming pool for a long session both morning and afternoon.

During each of the two camp sessions we had an overnight for the older campers. That evening, we had about 30 campers and a dozen counselors staying overnight; we were in the process of grilling hamburgers and hot dogs when the clouds that had been building all day let loose. It was a deluge; I’m sure a couple of inches of rain fell over the next hour, and then the storm blew over and it was clear again. We had taken refuge in the multi-purpose room (where it had gotten blessedly cooler), and were doing skits and singing, when we became aware of a curious low-pitched groaning sound. Not the incessant buzz of the cicadas, but actual groaning. We looked outside and the entire camp grounds appeared to be moving to the north. On closer observation it turned out to be thousands upon thousands of frogs, of all shapes and sizes, migrating towards our swimming pool to breed. The collective croaking of the frogs was causing the weird groaning noise.

 

There were tiny frogs about two inches long, huge Colorado River Toads, and everything in between. There were also large black lumps in between the gangs of frogs, moving along with them. They turned out to be dozens of tarantulas, washed out of their holes, swept up in the undulating mass of frogs headed for the pool. It looked curiously like a huge cattle drive, with the interspersed tarantula cowboys appearing to herd the frogs along.

Surrounding the pool was a two-inch chain link fence. The frogs, in their desperate frenzy to get to the water, were hurling themselves at the fence, bouncing back, and hurling themselves again. Only the small to mid-sized frogs made it through, leaping into the pool and depositing millions upon millions of frog’s eggs. A curious Darwinian process, made futile by the chemicals in the pool that would ensure none of the eggs could hatch.

What a horror show! Thousands of frogs in the pool, many thousands of more bashing into the fence until they just gave up and lay there, battered and sometimes bleeding. Tarantulas standing around silently bearing witness to the mayhem. And more and more frogs kept coming, from all directions, to the only source of water for a at least a couple of miles.

At some point the powers that be thought it would be a good idea to try to relieve the pool of the mass of frogs and eggs before the pool motor gave out. We gathered up all the kids and clambered into the pool and started throwing frogs over the fence. One of the counselors started scooping up eggs with the pool net and throwing them over the fence. Before long the pole of the net broke from the weight of the eggs.

 

The actively breeding frogs were indiscriminate in regards to what they, um, latched on to. There would often be a chain of five or more frogs stuck together. “What are they doing,” one camper asked me? I thought fast. “They are dancing,” I replied, “it is the Midsummer Frog Dance.” Fortunately, he appeared to accept my explanation, and that became the official title for the Event. Before too long the pool motor gave out, and so did we. There was no way to keep up, no point in going on. We took the kids back up to the multipurpose room and put them all to bed.
 

The scene the next morning reminded me of the disaster scene in the movie Gone With The Wind. Dead frogs and tarantulas everywhere, broken, bloody, festering in the hot sun. The pool was filled with frogs and eggs. It took about a week to get it all cleaned up, and I can not even begin to describe how bad it smelled. For weeks after we would find dried frog bodies under trees or bushes. The campers and counselors decided it would be clever to take the dead tarantulas and put them in the pocket of someone’s shirt, or shorts, or swimming trunks. You’d feel some soft mass in the pocket, reach in, scream “Holy Crap!”, and pull out a dead tarantula body. Ha, ha, ha!

I don’t know what that frog slaughter did to the resident frog population in the area, not to mention the tarantulas. I do know it was a night I will never forget. The Midsummer Frog Dance.