The 7.8 earthquake in China came as quite a shocker during my morning coffee the other day. Almost spilled me pants. And the destructions and deaths seem to have been many and widespread. My thoughts to those still left in the ruins and those left behind. Reading up on the disastrous death toll (VOA reports More Than 18,000 Buried, 3,629 Confirmed Dead) which only seems to grow as officials make their way over broken bridges and damaged roads, I came over this little gem of a Chinese news article: Toads warn the world of disaster (Google translation).
This article is significant for many reasons, because these tens and thousands, if not millions of toads and frogs disturbed a town in the two days before the disaster when they were heading away from the epicenter. This happened before the great tsunami in South-East Asia too, animals running for higher ground, and is a well-established fact of nature. If we could only learn to read this earthly language properly. The local forestry department stated however that "this is toad normal moving."
But the other and more worrying reason this article is the following, and I read the English translation because my Chinese is a little rusty:
Mianzhu City in Sichuan village southwest of the town of Macassar Ebony has a large toad movement: hundreds of thousands of toads mighty size of a pharmaceutical factory in the vicinity of walking on the road, many vehicles were crushed, pedestrian Caisi. The large number of toads, some villagers that there will be a bad sign.
While the Babelfish translation rhetorically asks:
Massively appears the toad, causes some villagers to recognize ‘can have not the good sign appearance’.
I agree. I don’t think pharmaceutical factory-sized monster toads crushing vehicles is a sign of good appearance.
Is this the last we’ve seen of the monster toads?
Were the forestry department in on it by expressing simply that "such large-scale migration of toad is a good thing, that the ecological environment in Mianzhu getting better and better"?
Is bigger and bigger better and better? Remember Godzilla..
Could lives have been saved by professional toad readers? Mr. Liu and other residents clearly knows that "In the past, we have never happened here Such a situation."
And how many toads made it versus the counter-factual event in which they stayed put? Nature finds a way.. Even if it’s extreme monster toads wreaking havoc.
I say it’s almost time for Earth to recycle.
Ew. That picture gives me goosebumps. Ideally, I’d translate the article in better English but it’s in the traditional script. I can only read the simplified version. Bah. Sorry.
I’d think the earth perpetually recycles itself, wouldn’t you?