You can’t make this stuff up: Dead frogs jumping?

Remember the movie title, “Dead Man Walking”? We’ll call this little tale “Dead Frog Jumping.”

After reading The Star’s feature on frog hunting in the Aug. 2 newspaper, reader Chriss Shumacher of Kansas City called to relate a story about her childhood experiences when the frogs she and her dad had taken didn’t know when to stop jumping.

“We had cleaned the frogs and had to legs in the frying pan,” she said. “The reflex action from the legs had the big ones still twitching and jumping.

“One of them jumped out of the pan and into the gas burner. But my dad had tongs and got it back in the pan right away.”

Shumacher’s dad, an insurance agent, used that as a teaching moment.

“He taught me to always cut that leg ligament,” she said. “That way, they wouldn’t have that reflex action and still jump when they were frying.”

Scientific sources point out that dead frogs still have living cells that respond to stimuli. The sodium ions from table salt used to season the frog legs trigger a bio-chemical reaction that causes the muscles to contract.

In other words, big bullfrogs don’t know when to stop jumping.

This story was originally published August 7, 2015 at 5:10 PM.