Sad Farmers Hate This One Amphibian Trick

I happen to be looking at a newspaper archive and specifically the Minneapolis Journal from Sunday, July 15th, 1906, and I came across a wonderful headline, Noisy Hungry Frogs Saddened Farmer’s Life. They scare his cattle and they also eat his flannel shirt. They ate his final shirt, huh? What? Yeah, I almost didn’t want to read the story, but it was a wire story about a farm in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. It was just four short paragraphs.

And it was about a farmer named Alvin Shoemaker, who was complaining that these large frogs had become pests on his farm. And the story said their croaking scares his cattle when he drives them to water. And last year, they devoured his strawberry crop. And then two years ago, they got into his summer house and ate a half dozen of his best flannel shirts, which lay there in the laundry basket. There’s just so much that was unsaid in that story.

Yes, I’m confused. I didn’t know that frogs would eat flannel, but okay. I guess, Mr. Shoemaker, I’ll take your word for it at this distance.

Yeah, I wonder about that, too. But noisy, hungry frogs saddened farmer’s life. That sounds like a riddle or a palindrome, but it’s none of these things.

Yeah, right.

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