Posted on 04/23/2005 2:57:10 PM PDT by martin_fierro
Exploding toads baffle German experts
Sat Apr 23,12:16 PM ET
BERLIN (AFP) - Hundreds of toads have met a bizarre and sinister end in Germany in recent days, it was reported: they exploded.
According to reports from animal welfare workers and veterinarians as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were propelled for up to a metre (three feet).
It is like "a science fiction film", according to Werner Smolnik of a nature protection society in the northern city of Hamburg, where the phenomenon of the exploding toad has been observed.
"You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding."
He said the bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal size.
"I have never seen such a thing," said veterinarian Otto Horst. So bad has the death toll been that the lake in the Altona district of Hamburg has been dubbed "the pond of death."
Access to it has been sealed off and every night a biologist visits it between 2:00 and 3:00 am, which appears to be peak time for batrachians to go bang.
Explanations include an unknown virus, a fungus that has infected the water, or crows, which in an echo of the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds", attack the toads, literally scaring them to death.
Jihadist toads?
The toads in Schaprode explode mainly on the road.
awlright guys....anybody got the Helen Thomas photo.....
Do they croak "Allah-Akbar" before they detonate themselves?
By George, I think you've got it!
Oh, sure ... the biologist "visits" them. I think we need look no further for the cause. Just check for genital warts and the case is closed.
Don't sheep blow up if they eat green stuff...or something like that?
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Steve Martin had an old drug skit about "Getting Small."
Has DU and Soros got a new eeeeevil drug and are testing it on themselves?
Since of course they wouldn't explode REAL toads, they're PETAphiles....
They can die of bloating, but I've never heard of them actually popping.
Would this kinda be like what happens when you put 'em in a microwave??
Der Frosch ist kaput!
Auch du Lieber! Abducken und verschleiern!
<:o
Die kroten in Schaprode explodieren hauptsachlich
auf der strasse.
There that has a more fingerspitzengefel about it.
Don't sheep blow up if they eat green stuff...
yes you have to go out and puncture their stomach with
a pin to let the gas out.
Kind of ruins it for haggis later though.
If I recall, Toad Suck Ferry ain't too far from Bubba's place.
Is there a German faction of PETA out there? What do they think of this??
Same thing happened sixty years ago in Hamburg !!!!
"yes you have to go out and puncture their stomach with
a pin to let the gas out.. "
I just about killed 15 to 20 dairy cows once, leaving them out in the alfalfa too long. I was taking a nap with my 2 year old...woke up and one of them was barely standing, due to the pressure on her heart. I flagged down an 80 y.o. out for a walk, and a drunken 70 y.o. driving (yes, driving) by, while awaiting the vet to show up from the other side of the county. When he got there, he stabbed them with not a pin, but a big knife in the (1 of 4) stomach(s). He then proceeded to do 4 or 5 more cows, instructing me how to handle it "next time." Fortunately the incident never repeated. I don't think this would work on a road toad with an overload...
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