PURPLE?! GOTTA BE KIDDING!

There was a queer half-tadpole half-toad I saw last year. I've seen quite a few really strange ones at Step Creek in their in-between stages...but this one's head...well, would you believe me if I tell you its face was PURPLE AND WHITE?! I couldn't believe how funny-looking it was so I first took a picture of it then sketched it at home.

I read online that some toad tadpoles, still in the unfertilized egg stage, carry toxins so that predators eating these eggs die instantly.

Could some mutation have occurred at fertilization that one egg wasn't fully detoxed, resulting in the development of lavender-ish features? Poor thing! But then he wouldn't know he was abnormal; it was the next pitiful fellow who grew the strange green skin. They'd both been dull gray-brown tadpoles, after all.

"when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding."