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Updated: Saturday, May. 15, 1999 at 00:15 CDT
By Elizabeth Campbell
LAKE WORTH -- Things just aren't hopping the right way for organizers of next week's Bullfrog Festival. They can't find any frogs.
"I don't know what we're going to do," said Judy Haas, executive director of the Northwest Tarrant Chamber of Commerce. "I'm beginning to panic now; there's got to be a bullfrog farm somewhere."
Hopping for the best: Lake Worth gig desperate for frogs; no toads need apply
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
If there is, festival organizers haven't found it. They've tried just about everything else, from pet stores to the Internet. They've even checked with restaurants that serve frog legs, only to learn that those delicacies are imported from Taiwan.
Haas is now thinking about enlisting Lake Worth High School students to search for live versions of their mascot.
Without them, the festival races on May 22 might be canceled.
Last year, organizers substituted toads, but they were too small (about 2 inches long), too sedate and too boring. And they lacked the leggy oompf to hop long distances.
Whereas the toad is basically a long-distance marathoner given to short hops, the bullfrog is a sprinter that can grow to 10 inches, weigh more than 2 pounds and leap a long ways.
"That's why you don't see toad-hopping contests," said Wayne Clark, director of the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge.
As for bullfrog races, they're simple: Put the critters in the center of a circle, and the first one that hops out wins.
There are some serious reasons why bullfrogs aren't sitting on lily pads or croaking at night around Lake Worth. Amphibians are in a global decline, and researchers don't know why.
Clark has heard bullfrogs around the preserve at night, but he said Lake Worth's fluctuating levels could have forced them out.
Development around the lake could be another reason why the frogs have disappeared. Pollution and holes in the ozone layer may be responsible for fewer frogs, toads and salamanders.
Rick Hudson, assistant curator of herpetology at the Fort Worth Zoo, agreed that the world has an amphibian crisis and that the missing bullfrogs could be a sign of "a sick environment." Bullfrogs are hardy creatures with voracious appetites, often devouring other frogs, turtles, large insects and even mice.
Back at the festival, which runs Thursday through May 23 at the City Park Fairgrounds, officials aren't giving up yet.
Wayne Young, another event organizer, said he and Constable Jack Allen are offering prizes for the longest and fattest frogs.
"We hope this will get people out to rural areas to visit their relatives and to see if they can catch bullfrogs in stock tanks," Young said. "We aren't going to kill these bullfrogs.
"We don't intend to have them for supper. We just want to have fun."
Lake Worth Bullfrog Festival
Dates: Thursday through May 23
Place: City Park Fairgrounds, off Loop 820 between Azle Avenue and Texas 199
Bullfrog race: 2 p.m. May 22
Other events include a carnival, parade and musical entertainment
Theme: "Backing the Red" in honor of three firefighters who died in a Lake Worth church blaze Feb. 15
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By Elizabeth Campbell
HURST -- Michelle Werthen knows that the fate of the 16th Annual Lake Worth Bullfrog Festival is on her shoulders -- or at least her patio.
Seven sage green bullfrogs arrived at her apartment yesterday from New York, and they are the stars of the festival, which began Wednesday and runs through 4 p.m. Sunday.
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
"They just can't escape," Werthen said as the $125 bullfrogs lounged lazily in a net- covered fish pond on her apartment patio. "When they came out of their box, they stretched and yawned."
The frog-finding frenzy reached fever pitch after a newspaper article described the Northwest Chamber of Commerce's desperate search for bullfrogs. Executive Director Judy Haas was led to Ward's Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, which shipped the frogs by FedEx.
Werthen's guests, renowned for their jumping prowess, arrived about noon yesterday in a wax-covered box cushioned in moss. Werthen said that when the delivery driver saw the "live frogs" label, he figured she had ordered a meal for a pet boa constrictor.
The seven frogs appeared fine yesterday in a prefabricated fish pond with heavy netting securely clamped on it to keep them from leaping away.
"I think they were happy to get out of their cramped quarters," Werthen said.
She has plenty of crickets to feed them before their race at 2 p.m. tomorrow. Today's festivities get under way at 5 p.m. and go until midnight.
As it neared evening yesterday, Werthen wondered about the noise level at nightfall -- and whether her neighbors would be disturbed.
With bullfrogs croaking and crickets chirping, "it will sound like a warm summer evening," she said.
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