Ditmars' Ditch Frog Delicacy

"Tastes like chicken" is one of the most classically annoying of the animal clichés.  Even before I became a keeper, I found myself inwardly groaning at how many times I've heard people make that joke.  The thing is, though, that some animals (a lot, I would say) DO taste like chicken - and chicken happens to be delicious.  Which can be problematic for the animals which taste like said bird.

In one of the quirkier anecdotes from the Bronx Zoo's storied history, Raymond Ditmars, Curator of Reptiles, was on an expedition to the Caribbean to collect giant ditch frogs, commonly known as the mountain chicken.  As you can imagine, the frogs got their name because they are, in fact, said to taste like chicken - and are big enough to have respectable drumsticks.   Ditmars was, at the time, America's most famous herpetologist, probably one of its most famous wildlife experts.  He's already traveled the world collecting rare specimens and written wildly popular books.  Picking up a few frogs hardly seemed like it would have been that difficult of a task for him.  

And it wasn't... until he sampled his first mountain chicken.

By the time the boat arrived in New York, a chagrined Ditmars was forced to admit that he'd eaten every single one of the frogs that he had been sent to collect.  

The legs of the mountain chicken were once the national dish of Dominica, until its endangered status forced the government to shift the focus away in an attempt to approve the species.  Perhaps Ditmars' example is as good of a justification for the ban as any other.  If one of the world's most admired frog lovers couldn't help himself from gorging himself on the animals, what hope would their be for most of us?