Sophia and Markus, Discovery Detectives
The Day It Rained Frogs
“Can you believe that story?” Sophia grabbed Markus by the arm as they left her kitchen. “Aunt Margaret sounds like a crazy woman, talking about raining frogs.” Sophia’s aunt was visiting from England and had just told them an intriguing story during lunch.
“Well, being Discovery Detectives, it is our mission to seek out the truth,” said Markus. “She did give us a date and a place. It’s raining out so we should wait to go work on our clubhouse. Let’s see what we can find out about this.”
Sophia and Markus founded the Discovery Detectives as part of a summer science project. In just the past two months, they solved the mystery of the mysterious mold in Markus’s refrigerator, discovered the reason why Sophia’s dog, Rooster, wouldn’t eat his dog food, and identified the strange caterpillar on Markus’s tomato plants.
“We can’t work on the Discovery Detective Scientific Laboratory until later since it’s raining,” Markus added. “ It’s suppose to stop in about an hour. We could investigate this until then.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Might as well get practice with our research skills,” Sophia said as she opened the door to the computer room.
They grabbed their tablets, and plopped down on the couch near the window. Rain blew against the window in waves, sometimes heavy, then slowing down, only to pick up again in a few minutes.
“Imagine looking out there and seeing frogs hitting the window. Weird,” said Sophia.
“We always list the things we know first,” said Markus. “And we know for sure we have never seen it rain frogs….or anything else not made of water. But, hey, who knows until we investigate. After all, Aunt Margaret is 73 years old. Maybe her imagination is better than her memory. So, let’s make a list of what we know.
He walked up to the large white board hanging on the opposite wall and grabbed a black marker. Between the two of them, they came up with the following:
- Aunt Margaret said she was ten in 1954 when the incident occurred.
- She said she lived in Stroud, England, where she was born.
- It was raining.
- She was walking down the street holding her umbrella.
- Suddenly, she saw tiny frogs landing on the ground in front of her and all over the street.
- She remembers them bouncing off her umbrella and scaring her with the loud noise they made.
- She got in the doorway of a local pub and waited for the rain to end.
- She thought it was pretty funny to see frogs falling from the sky.
- She remembers all the adults talking about it for weeks and her elderly neighbor reporting it to a wildlife organization.
“ We can check some of these things using the Internet. IF she remembers the date correctly, we should be able to find something about raining frogs in 1954. So why don’t we start there?”
What do you think they found out? Can it actually rain frogs?
Pretend you are a Discovery Detective, and do some research for yourself.
What did you find?
Maybe it only rains cats and dogs!
Send me your discoveries. I’ll tell you what I found out next week on Fun on Friday.
Have a great weekend outside!
Nature Mamaw
©2017 Kathryn Randall
Kathryn Randall 