At first I didn’t really believe it when I read about this place in Hamburg Germany called the Pond of Death where all these toads have been spontaneously exploding, but it became a lot more plausible to me once I realized that the pond got that name after the toads there were noticed swelling up to three times their normal size and then bursting, flinging their entrails up to one meter in the process. Before that started occurring, it was probably called “the Pond of Greenish Water,” or “Peaceful Pond” or “ the Pond of Intact Toads” or something. So I guess they have to print up new signs now.
From the wire service story:
"It looks like a scene from a science-fiction movie," Werner Schmolnik, the head of a local environment group, told the Hamburger Abendblatt daily.
Well, no Werner, not really. Unless either Tom Cruise or Will Smith could be cast as an agent working for a special environmental enforcement branch of Interpol -- a lone wolf agent with a checkered past and a broken marriage who lives by his own code and sometimes has to break the rules in order to protect the public. Alternately stoic and wise-cracking, his cocky self-assurance and disdain for bureaucratic red tape land him in hot water with department brass, who ignore his repeated warnings about the impending Toad Apocalypse until the Day of Reckoning finally comes. The movie could be called “Day of Reckoning.”
There, now it sounds like a science-fiction film.
I really only included the above quote from Werner Schmolnik because I liked the name of the local paper that first printed it, the Hamburger Abendblatt. I’m pretty sure I ordered one of those last time I stopped at the Burger Haus in Leavenworth, Washington. As I recall, it was delicious.
Posted by flamingbanjo at April 27, 2005 02:58 PMNaturally the first thing I did after reading this was to hit Google looking for pictures or (better yet) movies of exploding toads.
Unfortunately it wasn't until after I'd exhausted all convenient options that I realized this makes me the worst person in the world.
Posted by: Joshua at April 27, 2005 05:40 PM...not that this realization stopped me from continuing to look.
Exploding toad slide show:
http://www.local6.com/news/4410396/detail.html#
Posted by: Joshua at April 27, 2005 05:53 PM"loose cannon" surely could fit in there somewhere.
and couldn't you call the movie "pond of death"? or would that move it into its more likely genre of "horror"? in which case to succeed it would need to be based on the japanese original and maybe feature toad zombies.
Posted by: anne at April 27, 2005 10:14 PMI, uh, couldn't find the Toad Show -- not that I was actually, like, looking for it or anything -- but I did find out that Lake County, FL has a visionary solution to keep children safe from sexual predators. See, sexual predators might prey sexually on children while they're waiting for a bus, so Lake County passed a law prohibiting bus stops within 1,000 feet of the home of a known sexual predator. And then they removed four school bus stops. Because children are safer when they're walking across town to catch a bus.
http://www.local6.com/news/4424824/detail.html
Not to crassly get back to toads when the subject has turned to the more serious subject of sexual predators (not more serious if you're a frog, I'm guessing), but I just want to note that according to that link, frogs exploding, presumably against their will, falls under the category of "Animal Antics"
Posted by: Appalachia at April 28, 2005 12:40 PMMolly: Our children won't be safe until the menace of bus stops is removed altogether!
Last I checked, bus stops rank right after confessionals for that sort of thing.
Appalachia: I prefer "hijinks."
Posted by: flamingbanjo at April 28, 2005 01:13 PMHijinks or Antics, either way it sort of implies the poor toadies were actively involved in causing their spontaneous explosions, which seems a pretty weird way for an amphibian to choose to commit suicide.
Either they just couldn't figure where else to post it or else "Animal Anomolies" never occured to the editor.
Posted by: KING COMTE I at April 28, 2005 03:20 PMso... did you discover this by google-ing
"Exploding toads"
or
"flaming amphibians"
or
"science fiction projectile entrails"