Playground Frogs

De Hostos Playground
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

We hit the jackpot!

Located on the edge of Williamsburg, as it turns into Bushwick, this playground was named for Eugenio Maria de Hostos (1839-1903), a Puerto Rican Reformer and Educator.  I'm not sure how the frogs connect, but there sure are a lot of them.

They leap across the fence:

There are spray showers (see my Tumblr blog for a series of these): 

Their lifecycle is embedded in the concrete:

And three of these little guys surround the flagpole:

NYC Frog Project On The Road

Frog Bridge
Willimantic, CT (Windham, CT)

This.  Is.  Awesome.

The bridge is also called the Thread City Crossing, an apt name considering Willimantic's historical ties to the mill industry.  But the frogs?  Ok, here's the story . . .

It was the beginning of the French and Indian War, and the townsfolk of Windham, Connecticut, were all nervous about being murdered in their beds.  So when an ungodly racket broke out one summer night, they panicked.  Was it Indians?  The end of the world?  Much running about with muskets and praying and wailing ensued.  And then . . . nothing.  It wasn't until the next morning that they discovered the carnage:  dozens of dead frogs around a pond that was drying up in the midsummer heat.  It seems that the frogs had engaged in a little battle of their own, and, much to the dismay of the Windhamites--and the amusement of their neighbors--the legend was born.

Apparently, there is an opera.

The bridge was completed in 2001.  Each of the four frogs has a name, but I'm not sure who is who.

At some point, the town embraced the story.  The town seal is a frog.  And there are early banknotes that show a frog standing over the corpse of its defeated enemy.