Background: About twenty-five or thirty years ago, business took me to Crawfordsville, Indiana. It was a small town that seemed to have been embalmed in a block of clear epoxy sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, with not much added but electricity. I liked it a lot.
Arriving at night, I checked into a small hotel. The next morning I drove a rental car to the manufacturing plant I had come to visit. The rain that morning was as heavy as I had ever experienced. I was greeted by a young project manager at the factory. He looked at my well-drenched self and casually remarked, “Quite a turtle floater we got this mornin.”
The fine expression has stayed with me; it’s picturesque and says a lot with few words. I’ve never heard it elsewhere, but found it this morning on a blog that suggests it’s known in Texas or perhaps Minnesota. [ http://ourfieldoflittleflowers.blogspot.com/2007/08/turtle-floater-frog-strangler.html ] It came with frog strangler. A quick look at ADSL added toad strangler to my collection. None of these terms seem to have made it to New England.
Are they known in your part of the world? Any ideas about the origins?
I’ll be thinking of them while I go back to shovelling snow. Got ourselves a good moose burier this morning.
