An Unfortunate Frog

 As I set out for a restorative stroll this afternoon, I noticed a man kneeling in the road, apparently scraping something up. I recognised him – an extravagantly dreadlocked chap with whom I'm on cordial nodding terms – and, as I came up level with him, I saw what he was up to. He was dealing with the sorry remains of a frog that had fallen foul of a passing motor car – and with the considerable quantity of spawn that the frog, clearly a gravid female, had been carrying. As he scraped up the last of the frogspawn, into a Tupperware container, we agreed that it would be a good idea if he released it all, along with what was left of its progenitor, into one of Lichfield's many ponds and waterways. At worst, it would be food for other creatures, and with luck some of that spawn might hatch out into tadpoles; the unfortunate frog might not have died in vain. 
All of which reminds me, inevitably, of Mrs Leo Hunter's immortal 'Ode to an Expiring Frog' (as featured in the Pickwick Papers) – 

'Can I view thee panting, lying
On thy stomach, without sighing;
Can I unmoved see thee dying
On a log,
Expiring frog!

Say, have fiends in shape of boys,
With wild halloo, and brutal noise,
Hunted thee from marshy joys,
With a dog,
Expiring frog!'