The Picayune Frog vs. Pogo vs. Weather Bird

Or, the long-raging newspaper weather mascot wars.

“Sign of frog company, Rayne, Louisiana, 1938.” (Wikimedia Commons)

This week, through mysterious circumstances (that story, for the sake of avoiding digressions, will be its own post), I discovered the backstory of the Picayune Frog.

“The Picayune's guide to New Orleans,” 1900 (Library of Congress).

My hometown paper, the Salt Lake Tribune, had no weather mascot, just little icons for sun, clouds, snowflakes or raindrops dropped in the upper right-hand corner of the front page. The first mascot I knew was the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Weather Bird, the guy Newbie Orleans grew up with.

For some reason, the pink-faced, 21st-century Weather Bird never did much for me — I’ll admit a preference for “Dickey Bird,” the less wholesome cigar-smoking character that preceded him.

Weather Bird is America’s hardest-working, longest-running weather mascot: he’s been appearing in the Post since 1901, drawn by six different artists. You have to admire his Puritan work ethic, but I’m already much fonder of the Times-Picayune Frog.

The Picayune’s weather frog debuted in 1894, dreamed up by an ambitious redhead named Eliza Jane Nicholson, the first woman to run a major American newspaper.

Nicholson started at the Picayune as a contributing poet (not a great one, apparently), was hired as literary editor, then married the publisher and took it over when he passed. I imagine she likely penned the description of the frog’s arrival on the page below, as he’s described as having “a Waggish habit of occasionally dropping into poetry, which never lacks a point.”

“The Picayune’s Guide to New Orleans” (Library of Congress)

This fellow, “a dapper, pot-bellied frog with rolling eyes and a swagger rear,” was an immediate hit, inspiring his own polka, and as the 1903 Picayune Guide noted, a frenzy of appreciation.

“The most exclusive circles caught the idea, and ‘Picayune Frog Teas,’ ‘Picayune Frog Pins,’ ‘Picayune Frog Calendars.’ menu cards, etc., with the pictures of Froggie in his amusing garbs became the fashion of the hour,” it wrote. “No entertainment, no reunion, no fair, or children's party was considered complete without the presence of the Picayune Frog.”

The Picayune frog “soon became the ‘mascot’ of every charitable and philanthropic entertainment, the booths at which he was invited to take up his headquarters generally carrying the fair,” the guide continued. “Cakes and drinks and fashionable dishes were named in his honor, and so great was his popularity that a famous old chef in the French Quarter, unable to control his enthusiasm for the little frog, who had left the bayous and swamps of this old Creole State to take up his abode in a great newspaper office, complimented him with an original dish named in his honor. ‘Picayune Frogs il la Creole.’ Froggie, always ready to adapt himself' to circumstances, at once responded the next day by appearing as a waiter serving the dish.”

(Wikimedia Commons)

The weather frog, like Elton John, went through many retirements. In 1952, after 40 years of being nowhere in sight, he fought for his spot as the Picayune’s weather prophet in a “derby” against Pogo the Possum. The two predicted the weather side by side for a week, with readers deciding what creature to keep on board. Poor Pogo got his fuzzy little ass handed to him, with the final tally at 5,170 to 4,087. Though Pogo was popular at the time, NOLA tradition won out —and perhaps the possum rubbed some folks the wrong way because they viewed him as a Commie and a radical enviromentalist. Funny enough, one of the strips that irritated people the most featured Pogo and his alligator friend warming themselves over cigars, to indicate cold weather.

(Walt Kelly Collection, Ohio State University)

Weather frog came back from retirement in ’95, and was added to the paper’s website in 2011. Despite his august age and his long track record, he got razzed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“The Weatherbird celebrated his 110th birthday earlier this month — Feb. 11 to be exact — extending his reign as the nation’s longest continuous daily cartoon,” the paper gloated. “He's been appearing on the Post-Dispatch’s front page since 1901. But another weather icon could have been the record-holder — if he hadn't taken so much time off work.”

If I had to really choose a team here, I’d pick Pogo. But if it’s the frog versus the bird, I’ll take the frog, with all his false starts and stops, his polka and his raffish sense of style and his ease with the world. Work isn’t everything! Even if you’re a cartoon. And to understand the weather in NOLA, you really do have to be a “weather prophet,” especially when you’re progosticating from the swamp, rather that winging it into the sky to get a cheater’s eye-view of what’s hiding in the clouds.