THE GREATEST SECOND-CHANCE FROG QUEEN (Part 3). Queen Gertrude's nuclear-war talk coming up (someone's gotta talk about it!).

A Frog queen is trying to help save the human race--no small task! See full book on amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QML8BQN

What’s most important here is how we frogs THINK differently. Now we don’t read books or watch TV – don’t even have smart phones(!) – but we don’t really need any of that. We eat well (our bullfrogs eat anything that fits in their mouths...), get plenty of sun, water, and sleep (when we’re perfectly still we may not really be sleeping, but we re- generate energy in this state while we keep pretty alert for food and foes who might bother us). Did I mention that we breath through our skin? Oh yeah. So our whole body is like a big lung for getting good air in and bad air out.

So we were doing just fine, actually, until A HORRIBLE PLAGUE began to kill us off. We’ve lost a third of our species to this new and horrible disease. Let me tell you about it. It’s called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (see http://genome.jgi-psf.org/Batde5/Batde5.home.html ) and it’s a fungal disease that is threatening our entire species. We may be doomed unless something isn’t done soon by human scientists, to solve the mystery of how it happens and design a cure.

Isn’t it ironic that we have to depend on you humans to survive this blight? Since many humans are working hard to map the spread of our disease, trying to help us and save us from eradication, we’ve decided to help you with your survival.

WE’VE DECIDED TO IMPART KNOWLEDGE.

WE WILL OUTLINE THE HUMAN PROBLEMS WE SEE, THAT THREATEN YOUR SURVIVAL. So the rest of this little talk will have to do with that – our observations about you. Just hope with our frog brain-power it isn’t too late to turn your situation around. OK? Where to start?

Maybe the problems that you humans have are just based on failure to GET ALONG. Humans are basically so much the same it isn't funny. And with your many tools and resources, you still have STARVATION, inequality, WARS, contaminated water, BIRTH FATALITIES that differ between industrialized nations (USA is one of the worst!), RACISM, inner-species VIOLENCE & CONFLICT. Also, and this is a big one, the frog nations have been a bit concerned about NUCLEAR WAR, radioactive waste storage dumps (leakage into our ground waters...), and that is certainly an outgrowth-worry derived from your basic nature of ‘HUMANS NOT GETTING ALONG.’ We need to, and WILL, address this right now, right below.

Let’s start with NUCLEAR, since it’s use is spreading, not just in reactors-for-energy but also armaments – bombs for WAR. For awhile, the whole of radioactive production was receding — some American presidents tried to eliminate them in the past. But the dangers of nuclear proliferation have now actually increased, even in small countries like Iran (used to be called `’Persia’) and elsewhere. We frogs must try to help bring some sanity back to the planet, end this deadly trend, to help humans pull back from this edge of destruction.

WHAT IS NUCLEAR POWER? Here’s the best I can do with my frog brain, to outline the dangers. (This is a bit more scientific to discuss, but I’ll try). It’s beyond our normal difficulties of having to do with enjoying tide pool flows, bug population supplying our food, and the endless job of fending off snakes, birds, dogs, etc.

Here goes.

The word, ’Nuclear,’ defines the process by which atoms are separated, somehow pulled apart from themselves, so that the energy trapped inside can be released. When the nucleus of an atom is split into smaller parts, that process releases a lot of energy. Man used that energy in bombs that killed many thousands in Japan in World War Two.

Fortunately for frogs, we can’t have wars, and don’t have organizational skills to join in any kind of ‘group for war.’ All we have is ‘poison skin.’ But some of us, like the South American golden-poison-dart frog, can kill. That frog brother (or sister – usually a smaller frog) has toxins on its skin, from a diet of ants, termites and other insects available on the west coast of Columbia. Natives in the forest dip their darts in the frog poison after cooking, and that weapon can stay poisoned for up to two years without deteriorating in strength. So that’s pretty good poison!

Did I mention that a tiny bit of poison from ‘`golden,’ in the cut on a human’s arm or hand, can kill them in three minutes? Actually, an average Golden frog can kill 10-20 people with the amount of poison it carries. Luckily for those humans in the jungle, the yellow frog color is very visible and broadcasts for people to stay away...far away.

So no nuclear energy ( war...) for frogs. In general, we’re left to our own devices, which simply means hopping quite high for our size, eating, swimming, procreating, and trying to enjoy our life span of either a couple years in the wild, or much longer, some say up to 25 years, in captivity.

And isn’t it interesting that we can be born as tadpoles before we assume the shape and presence of an actual big frog? Not so easy to imagine. First, we are little wiggling things, swooshing around in water. We don’t even have hands to grip anything. And crazily enough, humans can purchase us as tadpoles, even the Golden dart kind, at an internet website for around $16 each: https://dartfrogconnection.com/

Raise your own poison frog pet! Better than a German shepherd And who needs nuclear bombs when you could raise a dart-frog army to fend off your attackers?

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In next section(Part-4) Queen Gertrude will explain how frog poison actually works. Also, there’s a pretty good discussion on “neurons.” (A neuron is a type of cell that transmits messages between the brain and other parts of the body. FYI: A jellyfish has 5600, an octopus has 500 million! So some fascinating stuff coming up!

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