NASA's Minotaur V rocket blasted off from its launchpad at a spaceport in Virginia, carrying the LADEE spacecraft on the first leg of its trip from Earth to the moon. The scene that resulted was beautiful. It was inspiring. It was epic.

It was also not without its casualties.

The picture above, snapped on Friday by one of the remote cameras NASA had set up for the big launch, captured a creature that found itself, alas, caught in the crossfire of humanity's drive to explore: a frog. A possibly very large, and certainly very surprised, frog. The launch setting, NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, is located on an island that is essentially a six-mile-long salt marsh; this little guy, it seems, happened to be in the wrong place at the wrongest possible time.

Pouring gasoline or other noxious chemicals into the earth to force rattlesnakes and other animals from their underground homes has been a tactic of some hunters and snake wranglers for years. But it has a harmful effect on the environment and wildlife. Now, Texas Parks and Wildlife (TPWD) is considering following in the path of 30 other states and banning the practice in most circumstances.

The technique, known as "gassing" is used to capture and/or kill many different types of animals, including prairie dogs. But its greatest defenders appear to be those involved in "rattlesnake roundups" that are a tradition in parts of the state.

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As far as the prospect that banning the practice will end the "rattlesnake roundup" tradition in Texas, TPWD says that's overblown.

"Many rattlesnake events currently discourage the collection of snakes by gassing," says the Department.

Ancient leatherback turtles, ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs were a rather staid and formal black, maybe with some gray, according to a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.



The study offers the first direct chemical evidence of pigmentation in the three species, and illustrates an example of convergent evolution, when animals separately develop the same adaptive features.

Dr. Victor Hutchison, at the University of Oklahoma, dispelled the myth when he studied frogs' reaction to temperature changes in water. He followed the procedure outlined for a proper frog-boiling; put a frog in cold water, and gradually warmed the water up. (He stopped well before the boiling point.) The frogs most definitely did jump out when the water got too warm for them.

My tortoise and my lizards have extended time out in the sunshine in the summer. Once fall arrives, it's time to start getting everyone indoors. Here in New York it is not good reptile weather after late September. The lizards have their own set ups, but the sulcata tortoise, being as big as she is, is in a pen in my boiler/laundry room. I have 80-degree temperatures in that room for most of the winter, with an occasional drop when the weather is really cold. Most of the animals can take that and I don't keep the heat too high at night.

I always keep the tortoise on fresh timothy or alfalfa hay and I switch off in the winter when she isn't getting the green grass of the lawn to graze on. In the past few winters I used an UVB/heat bulb over her pen, but always had a problem getting it to stay put. I use the metal light bulb holders with the clips and it seems they always slip and fall sideways directing the heat to the other direction or worse into the plastic wall of the pen. I meant to buy a holder to keep the light fixture upright, but kept putting it off.

I was doing laundry at the time in the basement and that day the tortoise was hiding under her hay, so I adjusted the UVB/heat bulb in her direction, using the clip on the back of the fixture to attach it to my husband's workbench, which is along side her pen. Ten minutes later, I was supposed to leave to go food shopping, but had put it off a bit to go online and check my email. Thank God I did, because that little sidetrack probably saved my house. I was upstairs for maybe five minutes, tops, when the downstairs fire/smoke alarm went off. I was busy on the computer and it took about three seconds to realize what it was. I was thinking it was the alarm on the washer when it goes out of balance. When it finally hit me I took off for the basement. I swear I took the last four steps in a leap, twisting my calf muscle in the process.

When I rushed into the reptile room the lamp had popped off and was lying fully on and operational down in the hay in the tortoise enclosure. The room was smoky and the hay was blackened and smoldering. I grabbed the light and put it on the floor and grabbed the entire armful of blackened hay and ran and dumped it in the slop sink and turned on the water. It had not ignited in a flash, but I believe if I had been a few minutes later it would have flashed into flames. The entire pen, my laundry room with hanging clothes and all my lizard litter enclosures would have been on fire. My basement ceiling is only six feet, so if the hay had blazed upwards and caught the ceiling I would never have been able to stop it.

The 25-30 centimetre crocodiles are still at the pool in a turtle tank waiting to be picked up by local snake and reptile handler Gavin Lawrence.

He said what started as a harmless prank ended up killing one of the baby crocodiles.

"It's annoying they've dumped them in the pool," he said.

"The chlorine is no good for them and at the end of the day it's sort of reckless."

Mrs Rodriquez said she suspected the baby crocodile succumbed to the heat after it was found after closing time outside of the pool.