Crazed cows and toad invasions? Superstitious views on the earthquake
CHENGDU, China: Can earthquakes be predicted, their destructive impact forewarned? Most scientists would say no. But if some insistent Chinese bloggers are to be believed, nature provided enough warning to have saved many of those who perished this week. In the days before the deadly earthquake shook much of mountainous Sichuan Province, their stories go, ponds inexplicably drained, cows flung themselves against their enclosures and swarms of toads invaded the streets of a town that was later devastated by the quake.