From the Scarborough, England, Daily News:
AMOROUS toads have caused the deaths of scores of fish at a lake near Scarborough.In one incident around 70 carp, worth about £3,000, were lost after male toads tried to mate with them on the Wykeham Estate.
Manager Mike Heelis said the situation became so bad last weekend he had to cancel two club competitions.
The toads clamp themselves on to the carp’s face and push its eyes into the sockets – and, if several reptiles are involved, the carp drowns due to its gills being closed.
Mr Heelis said the fish had encountered the toads after swimming into the lake’s warmer, shallow waters during the recent mild weather.
He said: “The fish are stressed, you can tell, because they are lethargic. We have several thousand fish here and maybe a third of them had the toads attached to them. This is unnatural.”
Unnatural? I find it hard to work up sympathy for carp, after seeing what destruction they wreak on U.S. waters (carp are exotics in the U.S.) Unnatural? You mean, as if the toads choose their species orientation, sexual orientations, etc.?
Nature, unnatural? There’s a moral there, I’m sure, but neither Don Wildmon nor Rush Limbaugh couldn’t find it with both hands, or all four hands.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] my last post, I linked to a blog post from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. I admit that, at first, I was amused that the post was “about sex”. But something else […]
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[…] Here is the first article. […]
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it’s quite possible–frogs in mating season will grab just about anything in amphiplexus. They are hard to dislodge.
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Yeah, they’re amphibians. I didn’t even notice that, and I’ll bet the copy editor glossed over it, too.
And now I wonder: Was someone hoaxed?
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Talk about unnatural–
Aren’t toads amphibians? Maybe the fish got warts? (only frogs turn into princes)
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