One reason I’m still working for a newspaper – instead of doing what everybody else is doing, that is working in Afghanistan as a forklift truck driver – is that in media, you are the ultimate voyeur, the keeper and revealer of secrets, the spoiler of crooks’ fun. And on days when work gets boring, you receive mails that remind you life never runs out of amusing stories to tell. This one we received from Uldarico Perez, engineer, from Tipolo, Mandaue City, who suggested tapping the expertise of frogs in the fight against dengue. This came out in the SpeakOut section of today’s issue of Sun.Star Cebu. – insoymada

FROGS VS. MOSQUITOES

“INSTEAD of dumping oil on ponds and lagoons, why not dump truckload of frogs? Frogs are natural insect terminators, they would eat mosquitoes in the area. Tadpoles also feed on mosquito eggs and larvae so the mosquito population won’t increase.

“Fifty years ago, rice fields, bomb hole ponds and open canals were populated with frogs; you could hear them croaking during the rainy season. But today, one hardly hears a croak. To solve the dengue problem, affected barangays should implement a frog-raising campaign.”