Fanged frogs?

[Cyrano]

I may have experienced how urban legends get started.

A year or two ago, I was having a conversation with an acquaintance who's a real estate agent in South Florida. She was relating a story about a couple to which she'd just sold a house.

The point of her story was that they had indicated that they wanted to live in the western part of the county near the Everglades and she was trying to sell them something in the central part of town. She told them that living near the glades might mean alligators in the backyard and super-sized mosquitoes.

They still looked doubtful, but she's great at pulling crap out of mid-air. "I've heard they've discovered a new species of frogs with fangs that live out there," she told them. The next day, they bought a house she had shown them.

Yesterday, I was visiting a neighbor in the hospital and I overheard a couple of staff members talking about how it's not a good idea to live near the glades because they've found frogs that have grown fangs.

I have no idea whether or not this conversation had anything to do with the story my unethical acquaintance had invented back when. After all, how many people have you heard talking about fanged frogs?

But then maybe some pigs really do have wings and there actually are alligators in the New York sewers. Who knows?