'A croak, a scream - and then deafening silence'

Cronkite News Service photo by Jennifer Gaie Hellum
How do you go from a human holding a frog to a frog devouring a human? Read the whole story below.

We have much to worry about in these parts:

O We have just elected Jan Brewer governor even though she can barely talk – except to her campaign manager Chuck Coughlin and campaign communications director Paul Sorenson, both of whom are linked at the hip with private prison companies, one of which recently allowed the jail break in Kingman to happen. Polls say she beat Attorney General Terry Goddard simply because she signed SB1070. And just for spite, she pulled all her campaign ads off the Valley TV station (CBS affiliate KPHO Channel 5) that’s putting the heat on her to come clean.

O Payson Mayor Kenny Evans is going to build us a $550 million college campus (affiliated with ASU, unless, of course, they back out, in which case it will be Harvard or Yale or perhaps Oxford). The problem: How are we going to provide all the pizza that thousands upon thousands of college students will be craving. And when they can’t find that much pizza, where will they turn to satiate their ravenous hunger? It’s a horror movie in the making.

O Yet another water rate hike is on the horizon for Town of Payson customers, just months after the last one. With long-range planning skills like that, maybe we should stop calling Buzz Walker the water guru.

But all of this is small stuff compared to the latest threat on the Rim Country’s horizon, a circumstance that seemed innocuous enough at first.

In a press release from Arizona Game & Fish and in a news story by Jennifer Gaie Hellum of Cronkite News Service, we Rimaroos were recently made aware of the latest release of Chiricahua leopard frogs at four Tonto National Forest locations in and around the Rim Country. The spotted “greenish” frogs, distinguished by a raised fold of skin running down each side of their backs, were declared a threatened species in 2002.

Up to the plate stepped Game and Fish and the Phoenix Zoo’s Conservation Center. With the help of federal agencies, “egg masses” were gathered in the wilds of Young and the resulting frogs were raised in a lab.

The young frogs were then released in the Rim Country. In fact, with the latest release last month, some 10,000 Chiricahua leopard frogs have now been introduced into our ecosystem.

How’s that for a feel-good story. Especially for the jolly green giant global warming wingnuts among us – of which I count myself one.

Except that it’s far from a feel-good story – unless you like the feel of slimey frogs crawling all over every inch of your body. Because 10,000 Chiricahua leopard frogs are a lot of frogs.

And you greenies better not try to dismiss this invasion as harmless because I have evidence from the Internet – the source of all truth – to the contrary.

From Fox News, the very fount of fair and honest reporting, comes a 2007 report about a killer frog epidemic in San Francisco. Seems a pack of African clawed frogs invaded Golden Gate Park’s Lily Pond where they proceeded to eat everything in sight, including native turtles, frogs and fish – and ultimately each other.

Worst of all, Eric Mills of the animal rights group Action for Animals expressed concern that the “fiendish amphibians,” which measure in at five inches in length and have claws on the toes of their oversized hind feet, could jump the pond and “spread their reign of terror across the Bay Area waterways.” “It’s like something out of a horror movie,” the San Francisco Chronicle opined.

Several year later, they’re apparently still waiting for the frogs to stop eating each other and make the big leap, but we here in the Rim Country don’t want to take that chance.

And speaking of horror movies, did you ever see the 1972 flick “Frogs” starring Ray Milland and Joan Van Ark. If you’re seeking hard core evidence of the potential disaster we’re facing, you need look no farther.

The movie is set on a private island that is experiencing an overpopulation of toads and frogs. Soon enough dead animals and people start turning up, most hideously disfigured.

Allow me to cut to the chase. Here, according to one Internet synopsis, is what happens to Jason, the crotchety old man played by Milland:

“Meanwhile, back at the estate, Jason is now alone inside the mansion, surrounded by an increasing army of frogs outside. He listens to patriotic music on his victrola until frogs begin to crash through the glass of the windows. Although he tries to ignore them, the horror of the situation proves too much for him. As the frogs swarm over him, he falls out of his wheelchair and suffers a heart attack on the floor. The frogs have succeeded in destroying their tormentor.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.

And I hope it didn’t escape your attention that Game and Fish and the Phoenix Zoo were aided and abetted by “federal agencies.” Which means, of course, that our Socialistic, Godless Muslim President Obama is also a damned frog lover as well. I’m wondering – do any of those frogs have birth certificates?

But the situation is not entirely helpless. Because 10,000 Chiricahua leopard frogs could come in mighty handy when those ravenous college students start pillaging our community in search of pizza. Run an army of frogs out to meet them and somebody is going to get eaten. Should be more fun than a rodeo.

But best of all, just imagine how much water is displaced by 10,000 Chiricahua leopard frogs. Which, of course, makes it look like there’s more water up here in the Rim Country than there really is. Which plays right into the Payson Water Department’s penchant for being generous in its estimates of our safe yield.

And if worse comes to worst, we get speechless Gov. Jan to sign SB 1071 declaring Chiricahua leopard frogs illegal aliens. Just think how much those National Guard troops will spend up here while they’re tracking down frogs. The chamber of commerce will love it.