July 5, 2006—It could be the most spirited interspecies escape since The Rescuers. But unlike the 1977 Disney movie, this situation is anything but fun.

Photographed Friday in the northern Indian city of Lucknow (India map),
a mouse perches on a frog in waist-deep (for a frog, anyway)
floodwaters—a small sign of the early arrival of annual summer monsoon
rains.

So far, more than 30 people have died in India as a result of this
year's monsoon-driven landslides and floods. Last year's deluge killed
some 1,000 people in the financial center of Mumbai (Bombay) alone.
Today polluted, knee-deep waters are raising fears of a repeat disaster
among the city's roughly 17 million inhabitants.

In drought-stricken areas, too, frogs were playing the role of rescuer.

According to the Indo-Asian News Service, some rural Indians are
holding frog weddings in the hopes that the amphibians' bliss will
inspire farm-saving storms. After marking the bride and groom with
vermillion and turmeric—traditional adornments in human Hindu
nuptials—villagers take the supposedly happy couple to a nearby pond to
honeymoon.

"If we get the frogs wedded, the Varuna, the god of the oceans,
will bless us with rains," Beni Prasad, a farmer in the village of
Khapa, told the news service on Sunday.

—Ted Chamberlain

Lien