SLSL "TSR" some notes & questions

[Elainemmbell at aol.com]

Another frog story:

In North Windham, Connecticut, there is a bridge whose 4 corners are 
decorated with gigantic bronze frogs with glowing eyes as big as maybe three 
bolwing balls.  A very strange sight indeed.  (I was lost in Willimantic on a 
broiling hot summer day in a car with broken air conditioning so when I saw a 
giant webbed foot in my rearview mirror I just assumed that I had become 
delirious from the heat...until I did a little research) There is also a frog 
museum in North Windham, both the giant frogs and the museum commemorating a 
battle that never took place in that town during the French/Indian War.  
Apparently the chorus of bullfrogs was so loud that the town thought it was 
under attack and prepared for battle, only to find thousands of dead frogs 
and no soldiers or Indians at their feet in the morning.  This from the 
Boston Phoenix:

"Zippy's been to New England's most recently inaugurated pointless 
destination, the Thread City Crossing over the Willimantic River in Windham, 
Connecticut. Not just any bridge, the TCC, colloquially known as the Frog 
Bridge, has something unique among 21st-century spans: four 11-foot, 
3000-pound bronze sculptures of giant frogs perched atop giant concrete 
thread spools. The spools pay homage to the Windham/Willimantic area's 
industrial heyday as a thread-making superpower. The frogs commemorate the 
Windham Frog Fight of 1754, a long-neglected skirmish of the French and 
Indian War that involved the local militia firing into the night at hundreds 
of dying dehydrated bullfrogs, whose (pardon the pun) croaking the 
townspeople mistook for Indian war whoops. Honest. And this is no Victorian 
eccentricity: the bridge-building began in 1999, and the last frog was put in 
place as recently as November 2000."
    
    



Elaine M.M. Bell, Writer
(860) 523-9225
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