Danger: Exploding Toads

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.