ANGELS CAMP, CALIFORNIA — The celebrated jumping frogs of Calaveras County made famous by Mark Twain can keep on hopping.
Thanks to a decision this week from California's Department of Fish and Game, the annual Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee in the Sierra Nevada foothills, about 133 miles from San Francisco now can safely hop forward.
Organizers had feared the Department of Fish and Game this year would enforce a law prohibiting the release of frogs back into the wild--a decision that could have meant the death of thousands of the four-legged creatures and the end of the contest.
"It has been a very good week," said Warren King, manager of the event, on Thursday. "They said we could take the frogs back to where we took them from."
The problem was that the bullfrogs used in the competition are a non-native species that have moved in on the red-legged frog made famous by Mark Twain's short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."
While it is not illegal to catch the amphibians, it is against the law to release them back into the wild. This caused animal-rights activists and others to worry that the frogs would be killed after the contest--a scenario that threatened the annual May event.
But state officials found a loophole in the law that allowed frogs to be returned to the wild if they were used in jumping contests, saving the contest and its some 1,000 green competitors, King said.