⚜️ The Frog Capital of the World Comes Alive

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This Week's Edition

Rayne hosts the 54th annual Frog Festival while communities across Louisiana gather for crawfish, cochon de lait, and spring celebrations. From frog derbies in the Frog Capital of the World to sacred hearts crawfish boils in Bogalusa, Louisiana gets weird, delicious, and purely Louisiana this weekend.

The Frog Capital Comes Alive
Your Area Code
When NASA Sent Rayne Frogs to Space

Name This Parish
Where Poor Boy Landry Started With Snowballs
Heritage Video Giveaway

May 7-9

The Frog Capital of the World Comes Alive

Rayne Frog Festival brings one of Louisiana’s most unique traditions to life

Rayne hosts the 54th annual Frog Festival May 7-9 with frog derbies, frog races, a frog leg sauce piquante eating contest, carnival rides, a parade, and live Cajun music from Wayne Toups, Corey Ledet, and the Parade Route Party Band. The Frog Capital of the World puts on one of the most distinctly Louisiana festivals you will find anywhere.

Mansura celebrates the Cochon de Lait Festival May 8-10 in the self-proclaimed Cochon de Lait Capital of the World with slow-roasted suckling pig, a zydeco dancing contest, a 5K, parade, hog calling, and a pig chase. Bogalusa hosts the Sacred Hearts Community Crawfish Festival on May 9 with boiled crawfish, live music, and classic Louisiana church festival energy. Bossier City brings Kegs and Corks with craft beer, wine, and live music.

Perfect spring weather. Festival season in full swing. And from Rayne to Mansura to Bogalusa to Bossier City, Louisiana is celebrating the strange and delicious traditions that make it like nowhere else on earth. Here is what is happening across the state—May 5 through 11

What's Happening in Your Area Code

🎭 New Orleans / Kenner / Metairie - 504

Live Music:

Wednesday at the Square continues every Wednesday at Lafayette Square. Frenchmen Street, Preservation Hall, and Tipitina's have shows all week

🎉 Baton Rouge Area - 225

Live Music:

Tin Roof Brewing Company and Red Dragon Listening Room have weekend shows.

🎶 Lafayette / Acadiana Area - 337

Rayne Frog Festival brings one of Louisiana’s most unique traditions to life

Rayne Frog Festival

Rayne · May 7-9, 2026

The 54th annual Rayne Frog Festival brings frog derbies, frog races, a frog leg sauce piquante eating contest, carnival rides, a Thursday parade, arts and crafts, and a full weekend of live Cajun music. The Frog Capital of the World puts on one of the most distinctly Louisiana festivals you will find anywhere on the map.

🚤 Houma / Thibodaux / Bayou Country - 985

Sacred Hearts Community Crawfish Festival

Bogalusa · Saturday, May 9, 2026

A classic Louisiana church festival with boiled crawfish, live music, and the kind of community gathering that reminds you exactly why this state is like nowhere else on earth.

🌲 Shreveport / North Louisiana - 318

Crawfish, cochon de lait, and Louisiana festival culture take over the weekend

Cochon de Lait Festival

Mansura · May 8-10, 2026

The Cochon de Lait Festival runs May 8-10 in Mansura, the self-proclaimed Cochon de Lait Capital of the World. A three-day celebration of the slow-roasted Cajun suckling pig tradition with a carnival, zydeco dancing contest, 5K, parade, hog calling, and a pig chase. Pure Louisiana.

Kegs & Corks

Bossier City · Saturday, May 9, 2026

Kegs and Corks lands in Bossier City on May 9 with craft beer, wine, live music, and a Saturday afternoon that captures the growing food and drink culture of the Shreveport-Bossier corridor. A great spring outing for North Louisiana.

When NASA Sent Rayne Frogs to Space

When NASA Sent Rayne Frogs to Space to Study Weightlessness

Rayne frogs were sent to space in a real NASA experiment

1970

In 1970, NASA was studying the effects of weightlessness on the human body.

They needed test subjects with inner ears similar to humans. Frogs were perfect—their balance systems work almost exactly like ours. But NASA did not just need any frogs. They needed the biggest, healthiest bullfrogs they could find.

They came to Rayne, Louisiana. The Frog Capital of the World.

At that time, Rayne was shipping millions of frog legs a year to restaurants from New York to Paris. Jacques Weil and his brothers had built the largest frog export business in the world. The Louisiana Frog Company, which opened in 1931 in nearby Mermentau before moving to Rayne in 1933, was exporting half a million frogs just four years later.

NASA contacted the frog companies in Rayne and requested two prime bullfrogs. The frogs were selected, packed, and shipped to the space agency. In 1970, NASA launched the two Rayne bullfrogs into orbit to study how weightlessness affects balance and orientation. The experiment helped scientists understand how astronauts might experience disorientation in space.

It was two decades before NASA sent frogs aboard a space shuttle. But Rayne frogs got there first. The Frog Capital of the World reached space before most of America even knew where Rayne was.

Today, the town celebrates its frog legacy every May with the Rayne Frog Festival, now in its 54th year, featuring frog derbies, frog races, and the memory of the two bullfrogs that went to space for science.

Can You Guess the Parish?

This Louisiana parish was carved out from Lafayette Parish and created by the state legislature on March 25, 1844.

During the mid-1700s, French Acadian families exiled from old Acadie settled in south Louisiana. The Spanish government awarded land grants to new settlers before 1800 on the condition that they would clear the land and help build and keep up levees, bridges, and roads. The first land grants in this parish were on waterways because there were few roads. Prairie areas were settled later.

Drawn here by fertile fields, abundant wildlife, and open prairie ideal for cattle grazing, some of the early families that helped settle the area included Peter Lee Jr., the Bergeron, Bernard, Bertrand, Breaux, Broussard, Chauvin, Chiasson, Doucet, Dugas, Hebert, Landry, Leblanc, Mouton, Prejean, Primeaux, Richard, Theriot, Trahan, and Valcourt families, among others.

In March 1850, the town was incorporated. In March 1854, it was designated the seat of justice for the parish. The parish was named for the river that runs through it—a waterway that French explorers had named for its reddish-brown color.

The answer: Vermilion Parish

Vermilion Parish blends Cajun heritage, farmland, and river life

Where Poor Boy Landry Started With Snowballs

poor-boy-landry-snowballs

Poor Boy's Riverside Inn — Where a Snowball Stand Became a Louisiana Institution 240 Tubing Road, Broussard (originally Lafayette, 1932)

In 1932, Hulo Landry had a problem. He worked for the family business at Evangeline Maid bread, but he developed an allergy to flour. He could no longer work with his hands covered in dough all day.

So in the middle of the Great Depression, he borrowed $1.30 from a relative, bought sugar and flavoring, and started a hand-pushed snowball stand in downtown Lafayette. He sold three snowballs for five cents. Businessmen on their lunch breaks bought the sweet icy treats to cool down in the Louisiana heat.

Every day, Hulo packed himself a huge sandwich for lunch. The sandwiches were called poor boys, and he had learned to make them while working at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans. His customers had never seen sandwiches that big. They started asking if they could buy his lunch. Kaliste Saloom, who would later become a Lafayette City Court judge, and other regulars urged him to open a sit-down restaurant.

Hulo took the advice. He started selling poor boy sandwiches at the snowball stand, and his customers nicknamed him Poor Boy Landry. The nickname stuck. In 1939, he moved the restaurant to a beautiful site overlooking the Vermilion Bayou at Pinhook Bridge. He renamed it Poor Boy's Riverside Inn.

In 1940, a devastating flood swamped the restaurant, ruining the building and equipment. Many believed it would mean the end. But three months later, Hulo Landry was back in business. In 1946, he opened the first completely air-conditioned restaurant in Lafayette. He enjoyed continuous success until his death in 1958.

Upon his death, his son-in-law Larry Hurst and daughter Kathlyn took over. They kept the same premise that brought success—quality in food and perfection in service. Larry Hurst taught legendary Louisiana chef Paul Prudhomme the recipe for blackening redfish. Poor Boy's was the first restaurant to top fish with crab meat, the first to blacken fish, the first to put alligator on the menu. In 1977, the restaurant moved to its present site in Broussard. Today, Poor Boy's Riverside Inn is run by Richard and Lori Hurst—third generation—with fourth-generation family members working in the kitchen. Ninety-four years after Hulo Landry borrowed $1.30 for sugar and flavoring, his snowball stand is still feeding Louisiana.

A $1.30 snowball stand became a Louisiana food institution

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