Look out, frogs!

Okay, I need to know if anyone in the world has heard this phrase before. This very evening I was walking through my aunt and uncle's yard. They are both great gardeners, and my uncle was giving me a very interesting tour through his work and nature's. Now, this day has been probably one of the most beautiful I've ever lived through: it started with a wonderful thunderstorm, abating and then meandering to overcast and cool-breezy, and by the time the soft light of the late afternoon sidled in, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. As we were walking along enjoying all this, my uncle alluded to the thunderstorm earlier. Except he said, "Yeah, this morning was a real frog strangler." Well, I had been in reverie, but I snapped out of it at this phrase, because the image it produced in my heretofore placid state of mind was quite shocking. I'm thinking of someone strangling a frog to death, which wouldn't be too difficult, unless one has a problem with being needlessly brutal. I knew, however, that this couldn't have been what he meant, and I couldn't connect this image with rain, unless it were some savage pagan ritual of sacrifice. So naturally I said, "What?" He said, "What?" I said, "What? Frog strangler?" He said, "Haven't you ever heard that before?" I said, "Uh, no. I'm thinking of somebody who's choked so many frogs that he's been assigned an epithet, which I can't connect with this morning...unless that's when he struck again." He laughed and said, "No. Frogs like water. This morning there was too much water. Even for a frog. Frog strangler. Sounds pretty simple to me." I guess it is simple, though it's interesting to me that the word "strangler" is used rather than "drowner" or something wet like that, or even "choker" makes more sense to me. Frog strangler. Anyone else ever heard that phrase? He insisted that it wasn't one of his own invention, that it had been around a while. I'm glad he said it. We made jokes about it for the rest of the evening.