A Frog in our Throat

A FROG that constantly changes colour is being worshipped as a GOD in India.
Hundreds of curious followers flock to Reji Kumar’s home every day to pray and ask for miracles.

Now one of the country’s top zoologists plans to study the rainbow frog. But Reji, 35, who keeps the creature in a glass bottle after finding it while out watering plants, is afraid it might CROAK first.

He said: “My one problem is that this frog does not appear to eat. I keep trying to feed it but it doesn’t eat anything. I don’t know what else to give it.”

The frog was a dazzling WHITE colour when Reji, from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, first spotted it.

Then it changed to YELLOW and had gone GREY by the time he got it home.

Lift worker Reji added: “By night the frog was dark yellow, and then it became transparent so you could see its internal organs.

“It seemed like a miracle to me that this frog had so many different coats. So now people come to see him and pray to him.”

Professor Oommen V. Oommen from India’s Kerala University, said it was not uncommon for animals to change colour.

He explained: “Frogs do change colour to scare away predators.

“But from what I have heard, the frog at Kumar’s place changes colour so frequently it is a bit unusual. I will collect it for study.”

From the Sun (London) June 8, 2009

Boy, that Professor Oommen V. Oommen sounds like quite the card, or a Melvillian divorce proceeding. We hope he never finds the Dowbrigade “a bit unusual”. On the topic of worshiping frogs, we seem to remember spending time among a tribe in the Upper Rio Napo region of the Ecuadorian Amazon that did just that, although their frogs only changed color after being licked…..