Terry Schiavo may have transfixxed the country for a week, but the whole now bears down on a tiny pond in Hamburg.

What the hell is behind those exploding toads?

And the first reports seemed quizzical, I had no idea it was this gruesome:

Local environmental workers in Hamburg have described it as a scene out of a horror or science fiction movie, with the bloated frogs agonizing and twitching for several minutes, inflating like a balloon before suddenly bursting.

"It's horrible," biologist Heidi Mayerhoefer was quoted as telling the Hamburger Morgenpost daily.

"The toads burst, the entrails slide out. But the animal isn't immediately dead -- they keep struggling for several minutes."

Normally, I'm not so big on horror movies, real or imagined. But this. I just can't turn away.

Apparently, the trouble has crossed the border to Jutland, Denmark. And continues in Hamburg. And it gets more revolting:

Some vet in Hamburg seems sure it's crows pecking out their livers. Listen to this:

"The crows are clever," said Frank Mutschmann, a Berlin veterinarian who collected and tested specimens at the Hamburg pond. "They learn quickly from watching other crows how to get the livers."

Based on the wounds, Mutschmann said, it appears that a bird pecks into the toad with its beak between the amphibian's chest and abdominal cavity, and the toad puffs itself up as a natural defense mechanism.

But, because the liver is missing and there's a hole in the toad's body, the blood vessels and lungs burst and the other organs ooze out, he said.

AP led with the theory, but wouldn't this activity be highly visible? Aren't there a lot of people watching right now? If they're seeing all the poor suckers grappling in their death throws, wouldn't someone have noticed a thousand crows descending to mount a toad? (Or one incredibly greedy crow with an insatiable hunger for liver darting madly about the pond?)

Over at the Hamburg Institute for Hygiene and the Environment they're rolling their eyes at the bird theory:

We haven't seen that. It might be, it might not be," said institute spokeswoman Janne Kloepper. "It's speculation," until it's observed, she said.

Local authorities are trying to talk people away from a peek at "the death pool." Yeah. I'm sure they're having a lot of success with that. Geraldo is probably boarding a jet even as we speak.