TRP: GR: Hamburg and the toads

[Bekah]

"She has left off tending her herd of toads on the witches' 
hillsides, and has passed her white wand to another apprentice."  (pg 
717)

Yeah,  and see what happens?

Now calling the Zone Heroes of Hamburg:   We have an emergency.   (lol)

from:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1563663,00.html

The residents of Hamburg have been told to avoid one of the city's 
lakes after a spate of mysterious explosions in the area. It seems 
the lake's toads have been violently and spontaneously combusting.

Modern day soothsayers in Germany have been stumped by a strange 
phenomenon afflicting the amphibian community of the northern city of 
Hamburg of late.

While toads falling from the sky is a well-documented, although 
widely contested, natural phenomena which some believe preludes some 
kind of natural disaster, there seems to be no such explanation for 
the spate of exploding toads the city is experiencing.

Blood and guts catapulted into the air

Hundreds of toads have met a bizarre and sinister end in recent days. 
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 meter.

Eye-witnesses to the spontaneously combusting toads have described 
the traumatic events as being like something from a science fiction 
film."

Werner Smolnik, a spokesperson for a nature protection society in the 
city is as flabbergasted as anyone. "You see the animals crawling on 
the ground, swelling and then exploding," he told AFP . He said the 
bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal 
size.

Residents warned away from "the pond of death"

"I have never seen such a thing," echoed veterinarian Otto Horst. So 
bad has the death toll been that the lake in Hamburg has been dubbed 
"the pond of death." Access to it has been sealed off and every night 
a biologist visits it between 2am and 3am, 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.
DW staff / AFP (nda)


Bekah