Over the last 12 months I’ve featured 2 different taxidermied, saxophone playing frogs that were being sold on eBay. I noticed the first one last January 27, and at the time I thought it was a bit of a one of.
Well of course that turned out not to be the case at all, since in November another one popped up on eBay. The seller of this particular frog mentioned that while doing research on this collectible, he/she had discovered a whole band of these taxidermied amphibians had been created.
This morning I was trolling Flickr for any new and interesting saxophone images that might have been uploaded over the past few weeks, and guess what I happened to come across… You guessed it… A beautiful photo of not only a sax playing frog, but also some photos and information about the rest of the band.
Frog With Sax Appeal (playing “Some day my prince will come”)
Photography by Bill Gracey Source: Flickr
Bill Gracey explains in detail the history behind his subject:
Years ago when I rode a motor cycle to work, my sister gave me a stuffed frog riding a wooden cycle that she got in Mexico.
When I moved to the San Diego area and started going to Mexico fairly regularly, I started buying stuffed frogs in stores that catered to gringo tourists. I did it to keep the bike riding frog company. I’ve had the great good fortune to acquire an entire band of stuffed frogs playing a variety of musical instruments. In addition to the sax player, I have a piano player, a bass player, several guitar players, a conga player, an xylophone player, a bongo player and an accordion payer. You get the picture. Frogs are endangered now, and I haven’t seen a stuffed frog for sale in Mexico for at least fifteen years. My greatest regret is that I failed to buy the frog that was spray painted black and holding on to a microphone. It would have been the soul singer I needed. The night was young, and I didn’t want to carry a stuffed frog around all night, so I resolved to go back the next morning and buy the frog. The next day the store was closed, and I went home later that day. I never saw another soul singer frog. I’m sure there’s a moral in there somewhere.
Gracey is in the process of photographing his instrument playing, taxidermied frogs. You can see them in a collection he has titled The Frog Band.
If you had bought one the taxidermied frogs that I noted in my weblog in 2010, you could be on you way to forming your own endangered species band. Go figure. 😮
I just bought the microphone black frog last night at a junk round up