It’s July 1952 in Oconto, Wisconsin. You wake up, stretch, pour some coffee, all while strange sounds filter in from outside.
Some witnesses compare the sharp popping to rifle fire. Only it is not distant rifles making these sounds — it's 175 million frogs.
Tea Krulos is an author and a contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine, wrote about the Great Oconto Frog Invasion for this month’s issue. Referencing a contemporary description from the state Department of Natural Resources, Krulos paints a picture of a demented circus performance.
“They said, 'It sounds like a finger being rubbed on an inflated balloon.' So if you could imagine that sort of croaky sound, the air is filled with it. And also, sharp popping noises at times," says Krulos.
Krulos sat down with Lake Effect’s Sam Woods to discuss the Great Oconto Frog Invasion, how leopard frogs have fared since that summer, and how little of the event is remembered today.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Sam Woods: It's hard to imagine that many frogs, but can you paint a picture? What was reported from this time and what did residents describe of what 175 million frogs looks like?
Tea Krulos: Yeah, so the story got some local attention in papers, but there was also a big magazine piece in the New Yorker, of all places, about the story in 1953. They describe how in the summer of 1952, millions of frogs were pouring into Oconto near Green Bay, and the town was completely overwhelmed. I mean, the frogs far outnumbered the people.
So you had scenes like someone hearing chirping and flashing their flashlight into the backyard and seeing millions of glowing eyes kind of reflected back. It was kind of a grisly scene as people were running over them with their cars and mowing their lawns. You can imagine that was kind of a mess, but it eventually subsided and things went back to normal. But it was this kind of a freak frog invasion.
There's some skepticism on the number of frogs. So whether it's 175 million or just millions more than usual, let’s say there was indeed this big population boom of leopard frogs. What factors could lead to such a boom out of nowhere?
A great source for the story was, I was able to speak to Joshua Kapfer, he's from UW-Whitewater, and he's co-author of a book, “Amphibians and Reptiles of Wisconsin.” So, I figured this would be the guy to talk to. And yeah, he did express some skepticism over that number simply because we don't have a lot of good data from that era. He pointed out that game fish and birds have been pretty well tracked. Reptiles and amphibians are not seen as a priority.
So he said that this could have been possible at that time to have that large of a number. The reason for it is he described frogs as being a "boom or bust" type of animal. So that means they lay a massive amount of eggs because the environmental factors and predators will get a lot of those eggs, so they overproduce so they can have a population. Usually what happened in that area was the water level would drop and then it would rise, so a lot of the eggs would get wiped out. But this particular summer, that didn't happen. So all of the eggs were in pretty good shape, which is why you had this massive amount of frogs who emerged that particular year.
This kind of boom wouldn't be possible today because, sadly, leopard frog habitats have been in sharp decline since at least the 1960s. That has a lot to do with development, predators and invasive species. So there's no way that would happen these days. But in 1952, it certainly was possible.
How does this story live on? How does Oconto or northern Wisconsin remember this?
It's a story that seems to kind of get dusted off perennially. It gets dug up once in a while and someone will do a piece on a website or something about it. There's no like thing to commemorate it in the area. I always love it when a small town will have a festival celebrating their local lore, that's what makes a place unique. But there's no ‘frog invasion festival.’ There's no frog statue, unfortunately. There is a country lane called Frog Pond Road, and I was told that was inspired by this incident. But that's about it there so far.
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