#fear frog

The first time we ran into the words rana comemiedo (sometimes sapo comemiedo) were in Spanish documents from the Chichimeca War. There are accounts of a particular group in Zacatecas ceremoniously feeding their warriors frog legs before battle. To paraphrase, one observer said the purpose was because the frogs, blessed by a god, would sit in a person's stomach and could eat the "centipedes of fear".

Currently, we're sifting our way through works during the Spanish colonialism period and have found similar accounts of fear frogs during their time in the Philippines. We have a lot of theories involving the Philippines, but they require a whole section of their own.

The only myth mentioning fear frogs is in Volume Three. Here we meet a kerubin with no name in charge of a very deep pond full of frogs. These frogs are given to sleeping children to swallow once they are too old for childish fears. They act as a sort of guardian angel throughout a human's life by trying to eat all of Fear's centipedes. We are never given a description of fear frogs, but there are some frogs painted on the gilded pages of Volume One we believe are meant to represent them.