The Victims

Three thousand children?!?
Three thousand children? Who has three thousand kids? I took a deep breath and asked her to tell me a little about herself.
"Well," She said, "I'm a frog. . ."

What a tale she told
Tadpoles in different stages of development

It turns out that frogs are part of a larger group of animals called amphibians--which literally means "double life." Frogs other amphibians spend part of their life in the water and part of their life on the land. She tells me she lays between 500 and 5000 eggs every spring. Some of her cousins might lay as little as 10 or as many as 30,000. She lays them in the water and when they hatch they come out as somethin' called a tadpole. These baby frogs have no arms and no legs. Instead they have a tail and--get this--gills like a fish so they can breathe underwater. After a while the tadpoles sprout arms and legs, absorb their tail and move out onto the land. Then most of them split time between the water and the land for the rest of their lives.

.....Can you believe she told me there were almost 4,000 different kinds of frogs! Some of her cousins live in the desert, some live in trees. There are tiny tree frogs about the size of your thumbnail and giant, lumbering bullfrogs that might eat rats, snakes or even ducklings! Some of her cousins are masters of disguise and others have bright, gaudy colors that warn against their poisonous skin. It was amazing, I had no idea how fascinating these creatures really were.

The other shoe
Then the other shoe dropped. The tricky thing about frogs is that some of the things that make them so special also make them prime targets for pollution, climate change and a million other changes in their habitat--that's what she called the place where they live.

The Trait	The Catch
Moist, permeable skin helps them absorb oxygen and water	It also absorbs harmful pollutants
No hair or feathers makes swimming easier	Also means no protection from UV radiation
Eggs have no hard shell	Makes delicate embryos vulnerable to pollution and UV radiation
Double lives mean many live on land and in the water	Exposed to stresses on both land and in water

She hit the nail on the head--these frogs were right in the environmental crossfire. Now that I had my feet wet, so to speak, I took another deep breath and asked her to tell me why she was here. I was ready for her to tell me about the crime. . .