Ol' Rip the Horned Toad
[1][3] The same year, a Texas political delegation led by Senator Earle Mayfield presented the docile lizard to President Calvin Coolidge at the White House for his inspection.
[3] Decades later, the saga of Ol' Rip inspired Looney Tunes scribe Michael Maltese to write a 1955 animated theatrical short entitled One Froggy Evening.
[3][6] His father, Eastland County clerk Ernest E. Wood, decided to test the West Texas tradition that the creatures could survive for many years in hibernation.
[1][6] Thirty years later, during the Jazz Age, construction workers began to tear down the old courthouse, and town officials scheduled a public event to open the time capsule in mid-February 1928.
[8] As a result of House's sensationalist newspaper articles, a crowd of 1,500 spectators gathered in Eastland, Texas, to witness the opening of the time capsule and to learn the fate of the horned toad.
[9][10] Newspaperman Boyce House recalled the chaotic scene: When the brick wall was pulled away from the cornerstone, the crowd rushed forward, in its excitement, pressing so closely against a worker that he barely had room to ply his pick to break a layer of cement over the top of the stone.
[11]Following these newspaper reports, zoologists and other scientists began a public debate over whether a Texas horned toad could survive such an extended period without water, sunlight, or oxygen.
[12] Dr. Raymond L. Ditmars, curator of mammals and reptiles at the Bronx Zoo, declared the alleged survival of the entombed lizard in Eastland, Texas, to be "utterly impossible".
[8] Indifferent to this scientific debate, Eastland locals instead ascribed the horned toad's "miraculous" survival for thirty-one years to the presence of the Bible in the time capsule.
Later that same year in New York City, motion pictures were produced with Will Wood introducing Ol' Rip, and "a bug-catcher was paid $0.50 (equivalent to $8.87 in 2023)[16] each for insects that the frog devoured to please the cameraman".
[3] The peak of Rip's fame occurred in May 1928 when, during his national tour, the lizard was transported to Washington, D.C., where Texas senator Earle Bradford Mayfield presented the specimen to President Calvin Coolidge.
[20] Angry that "the city of Eastland was building its future around a dried-up horned frog",[20] the letter-writer offered to pay $5,000 (equivalent to $26,772 in 2023)[16] to anyone who could prove the toad in the courthouse was truly Ol' Rip.
[20] In 1955, Looney Tunes writer Michael Maltese was inspired by the story of Ol' Rip to write an animated theatrical short entitled One Froggy Evening.
