Exploding toads: a cautionary tale

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/04/2005 (7545 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THEY may have solved the mystery of the exploding toads in Hamburg. A veterinarian who examined the remains of the defunct critters blames the mass die-off on crows which, he believes, attacked them, pecked the livers out of their abdomens and provoked the swelling response natural to toads under attack.

Because their abdominal walls had been punctured by the crows, however, their internal organs spilled out through the wound and they died horrible deaths.

This explanation did not, however, immediately win the assent of all observers. A spokesman for the Hamburg Institute of Hygiene and the Environment said no one had yet seen crows pecking the livers out of toads and inducing the explosive results, so the veterinarian’s explanation was one more hypothesis to set alongside the others. Rival explanations included a virus, bacterium or poison in the pool where the dead toads were found or a mass suicide needed to save the toads from the effects of overpopulation.

A solution to this mystery is urgently required. More than 1,000 toads have died already, some in Hamburg and others at Laasby in the Danish region of Central Jutland. It’s quite unacceptable that toads are spontaneously exploding in advanced, civilized places like Hamburg or Central Jutland. We could understand such things happening in Bismarck, North Dakota, where the newspaper yelps for a boycott at the drop of a hat, or in Pitcairn Island, but surely not Hamburg. If you can’t count on the toads of Hamburg to live out their normal lifespan and die a decent, respectable kind of death, then what can you count on?

Moreover, the exploding toads may hold the key to the mysterious behaviour of Canadian members of Parliament. If we can figure out why the Hamburg toads do this, we may get a clue to what the Canadian political leaders are doing.

Some frogs and toads are famous for inflating their bodies, when under attack. This sometimes has the effect of fooling predators into thinking the tasty little morsel is much too large to swallow at one gulp. Toads and frogs are not terribly swift nor terribly well armed to fight off predators, so the illusion of great size is about the best defence they can muster.

This behaviour is not, however, unique to frogs and toads. When you closely question a Canadian member of Parliament, you may observe similar behaviour. Arms akimbo, jacket or sweater spread wide, the organism under attack tries to make itself seem larger and more formidable, far too big to be swallowed at one bite.

Television images of Question Period in the House of Commons are unkind because we who sit quietly in the calm of our living rooms cannot readily imagine the raucous and threatening atmosphere of the House. In a tight shot of Mr. Harper hollering a question over the taunts of the Liberal members or Mr. Martin bellowing an answer over the chorus of opposition catcalls, those distinguished leaders of our nation are in danger of looking like idiots.

I have sometimes worried about these men and the other members of Parliament when they puff themselves up big because they look as though they might suffer some kind of seizure or burst a blood vessel on account of the excitement and the exertions of the moment. Now, the news from Hamburg and from Central Jutland has drawn attention to a new danger: They might actually explode, right there on the floor of the House of Commons, right there on television in front of a horrified nation, spilling themselves physically onto the furniture, the handsome green carpet and the elegant floor of that national shrine.

If the veterinarian in Hamburg is actually right, then the solution is simple. The solution in Hamburg will be to chase away the crows who poke holes in the toads. The solution in Ottawa will be to shoo away the journalists, satirists and other commentators who poke holes in the pretensions of the elected officials. We owe it to our readers to notice the weaknesses in the reasoning of the leaders of our nation, but we would not want to be responsible for an elected official exploding like a Hamburg toad. Unkind we may sometimes be, but there are limits.

terry.moore@freepress.mb.ca

PHOTO