It was a small brown frog I held in my hand that day, plain and utterly unremarkable, small enough to walk by without a second glance. It was a Torrent Frog – a Sharp Snouted one to be exact, an inhabitant of small forest streams in North Eastern Australia. Such a ubiquitous creature that no-one invested time in understanding it, in fact more than one biologist described it to me as so common you were bound to step on a few en route to more interesting and important research pursuits. But she was dear to me. I had raised her from a tadpole and now she was mature, ripe eggs visibly bulging from her sides, I should have expected to find her breeding, she was young – in her prime, she should not be unwell!
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