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The day it rained frogs in Calgary

A file photo of a frog sitting in a pond. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)

From the strange but true files comes a story of one of the weirdest events to ever occur in Calgary.

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It was Aug. 4, 1921 when frogs rained out of the sky onto 11 Avenue.

Through the ages, there have been numerous reports of insects, fish, live lizards, frogs and other small animals falling out of the sky during rainstorms.

In December 1857, live lizards rained down on Montreal. Large black ants pelted Winnipeg during a thunderstorm in May 1895 and fish fell during a downpour in Moose Jaw in 1903.

The most likely explanation for this phenomenon is that these unfortunate creatures get sucked up by tornadoes that develop in thunderstorms and then pass over bodies of water. And because what goes up, must come down, eventually these critters fall back to earth — sometimes a great distance from their original location.

Although it isn’t known if the frogs that rained down in Calgary lived, in other locations where this has happened, the animals have sometimes survived but were left stunned or injured.

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Apparently the neighbourhood cats, which would have likely roamed freely back in 1921, feasted on the frogs.

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