Fellsmere Frog Leg Festival

It’s a Saturday night and Mom and I are here in Fellsmere, FL, a little hick-town growing out of the swamps through agriculture and as it grows up, its setting records. Frog leg records that is, as every year, and the reason for our presence, they put together the Fellsmere Frog Leg Festival, the world’s largest frog-leg festival as measured by the Guinness Book of World Records.

So of course, the first thing Mom and I did was get a frog leg and gator tail dinner. Now after fried grasshoppers in Thailand and chicken testicles in China, it was cool to see Americans chowing down on frog legs.

Though I do have to say, there isn’t much meat on a frog leg, and what there is tastes a little swampy, kinda like mullet (the freshwater fish). The gator tail didn’t impress at all, being a little rubbery and tasteless. Then again, as both were deep fat friend, any strong salient taste was fried away.

After the munchies, Mom and I wandered around the rest of the festival, enjoying the carnival rides and game touts. So did quite a number of others, who on close inspection were mainly Mexican. I’d heard that Fellsmere, with its agricultural migrant labor needs was going Mexican in a major way, but at the festival is was amazing.

About 80% of the crowd spoke Spanish, and oddly, dressed just like Florida rednecks; tight jeans, boots, cowboy hats and bolos. The rest were real Florida rednecks, or random folks like Mom and I. And as this is America, we all got along like family.

I bet it was all those frog legs.