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.
Boom!!
ROTFLMAOAPMP!
Looks like human skin, a knee to be precise. Stained with the scrub they use to sanitize the skin before surgery. The placement of the tools looks like what they did when they did arthroscopic surgery on my knee. They didn't even have to suture the wounds.
Schadenfrosch?
or Helen Thomas?
With beef cattle (my only experiences), they were sometimes poked more than once since the rumen seals up in seconds. The pressure actually sufficates them, by squeezing the lungs.
(I used to farm, but the big farms squeezed the 'air' out of my way of life.)
Not much chance for the independent farmer these days...
Been there, done that and it's not pleasant.
+ 
= Not good
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