Karma, Revelation

Watched Pots, Bolting Horses, Last Laugh

Milving, Sports Car, Big Rock

Popular Parlance

Otter Attack! Crime and Punishment

Kiwi Conundrum, Teepees, Navigation

Amphibian Emperor

Education, Ozones

There can be few arenas in which it is more difficult to discern an obvious conqueror than the moist world of the amphibian. Which slimy beast could be rightfully honoured with the mantle of Uber-air-breathing-yet-water-dwelling-thing?

One powerful contender is the North American Bullfrog. This massive beast, around a foot long, has infiltrated our green and pleasant land from across the atlantic and is spreading at an enormous speed through the ponds of Britain. It eats our native, smaller and cowering frogs like the pygmy cowards they are, and it does not give a shit.

The bullfrog, though, meets its match with the Amazonian Poison Arrow Treefrogs, small, sleek, and brightly coloured, they prance about like exhibitionist hippies in tie-dyed skin. Insult their family and they will stand on you, so light that you may not even notice them. The deadly poison on their hide will seep through your skin and leave you dieing in spasms of agonising pain, vomiting your own stomach and shitting out your guts. Meanwhile, the frogs look on, singing "tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree." Callous, brightly shiny slimy murdering small bastards of the trees.

Even these ninjas of the forest, though, while being utterly deadly do not have the sense of humour so treasured in the hallucinogenic toads of Australia. These ugly fat warty stinking bastards sit bored in the mud muttering insults at each other under their breath, waiting for days on end for someone to walk by. When a passing creature or person strays within jumping range, they leap with lightning speed into the mouth of the innocent victim, forcing them to lick their acks. They then roll around in hysterical fits as the victim staggers in a hallucinogenic trance over a cliff, or into a large pit filled with rotting dairy produce. These Beadles of the toad world are practical joking afficionados of the highest order.

There are, of course, others in line for these acolades- the newts who shed their tails for a laugh, salamanders who crawl into babies mouths and poison them, then go to sleep in raging fires to prove how hard they are. Toads who are so bored that they burrow into the ground and fall asleep for ten or twenty years until it rains, so that they can wake up and piss about in the mud for a bit before going back to sleep- their lifespans can be measured in thousands of years although they may only be awake for four or five hours throughout this time.

The list goes on.

How in the name of the Lord are we to decide on the Emperor of the Amphibian Kingdom when the annals of its history are so cluttered with hard bastards?