Welly Wanging & Frog Pregnancy Tests
What do these two things have in common? My weird friend, Carol
We all have that weird friend. Well, I have a whole entourage of them because I collect human oddities like they’re baseball cards or Pokemon. But one of the more eccentric bipeds in my human collection is my friend
.She writes one-minute facts that give me a quick hit of quirky to start my day with.
I highly recommend adding her to your morning routine.
Thankfully, I get her in higher doses as we chat more days than not, and she never fails to crack me up. She’s hilarious in real-time. Carol makes me laugh for many reasons, but one of them is her wild British vocabulary, including some curse words that might be British or might be made-up Carol shenanigannery.
Either way, I keep running a list of them.
Like Petulantfuckwankers and Arsewipefuckwitcockwomblybeardyandnonbeardytwatcakes.
But back to Carol’s hilarious one-minute facts. I adore these things. I know many of us here on the ‘Stack love sinking our teeth into long, complex pieces (she writes those too, often about parenting). But me—I love a quick hit of weird and funny.
That’s where the one-minute facts come in. And I’m going to share two of them here, for you to get your weirdness whistle wet with.
If you like them as much as I do—and want to show some Substack love to a brand-newbie writer here!—subscribe to her Stack.
One-Minute Facts: African-Clawed Frogs
Meet the hoppy pregnancy tests
When is a frog not a frog? When it has a side hustle as a pregnancy test.
While I am amusing myself imagining that a frog can look at you with its beady little eyes and give you one ribbit if you aren’t pregnant/two if you are, this is a more scientific thing.
In the 1920s, researchers discovered that these frogs were accurate human pregnancy predictors. Who knows where the original idea came from to try this. But it worked, and these frogs became pregnancy testers until the 1960s.
The test involves injecting female urine under the skin of a female frog. If the lady wee comes from a pregnant woman, the frog produces eggs of its own in a few hours. If the frog doesn’t produce eggs, you aren’t pregnant.
This was a fast and reliable pregnancy test. Though peeing on a stick works faster and is far less icky for the frogs.
One-Minute Facts: Welly Wanging
You really couldn’t make this stuff up
Brits will argue till the cows come home that we invented the most significant sports in the world. But, let’s ignore the big ones and take a look at the noble sport of welly wanging.
As you can see from the photo, the core rules of this sport are to hoy a wellington boot into the air. Longest throw wins and all that.
But, depending on the contest, this is harder than you think.
Some competitions make you throw from a standing start or swivel from a shot-putt pose. Others let you take a run-up. In Upperthorpe, the home of welly-wanging, the run-up has a 42-pace limit in honour of the author Douglas Adams (if you know, you know).
Wellies are sometimes empty and sometimes filled with water. In some locations, contestants have to stand in a dustbin and throw from there.
Don’t ask. I have no idea.
So, that’s my weird friend Carol.
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Ah, thank you so much 🙏
I’d forgotten about arsewipefuckwitcockwomblybeardyandnonbeardytwatcakes - made me laugh all over again 🤣
Betcha if they ever opened the Welly Wanging events up so kids could participate they'd call it the Huk Yeet . . .
I'll see myself out