I must admit to having been green with envy as reporter Tyson Jackson chronicled the best ‘animals and kids’ story of the year (“Listen up for a croaking good time”, DT, 15/11). While a plague of frogs proved a punishment of biblical proportions in Egypt’s past, I guess our frog shortage today means we are in God’s good books after all. FroglD Week is a great promotion for frog ecology. As a child in a farmhouse in Lismore, the booming melody of a throng of green frogs echoing through the downpipes always warned of imminent rain. Their prediction value would surely surpass the Bureau of Meteorology today. Equated with evil in the Middle Ages because of their ugly toad cousins, and even ending up in a witches’ stew in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, our amphibians’ reputation has seemingly croaked over time. But, science has frogmarched past falsehoods, proving that they are not the despised source of warts after all. On the contrary, they are at risk from us as sanitary lotions, fragrances and miscellaneous chemicals on our hands endanger their health if absorbed. Seeing them at risk leaves me choked up with a frog in my throat, you might say. Alan Sexton, North Parramatta 16Nov2024
