Animals: In The Bronx

The owner of an apartment house in The Bronx last week wrote to the Department of Sanitation complaining of “conditions that exist on the side and rear of my house. … It is … a body of water commonly known as a swamp.” He said that in the swamp subsisted “a large school of frogs. . . . The sound they make . . . is the most annoying thing I have ever heard. The few remaining tenants . . . threatened to move unless something is done about it.”

Interviewed, Mrs. Louise Mulligan, superintendent of the building, said: “The frogs really are terrible, although some don’t mind them as bad as the mosquitoes. Usually the frogs start just about the time the mosquitoes first get through the screens, about dusk. . . . We’ve tried to poison them with bichloride of mercury tablets . . . but … I thought they even sang louder after that.”