Toy frog 'rescued' in Alps

Vienna - A mountain rescuer said on Monday he was hired by a German couple to look for their toy frog that had tumbled from a 2 000 metre peak in the Austrian Alps.

After an eight-hour search costing Doris and Juergen Bellmann €425, the cuddly green toy, something of a lucky charm for the couple from near Munich, was found, rescuer Markus Fleischmann said.

"It wasn't that dangerous a mission and, it being off-season, I had nothing better to do," he said.

Doris Bellmann, 53, told the Heute daily that she was taking a photograph of her engineer husband and the frog on top of the 2 192 metre Hinteren Goinger Halt peak in the Austrian state of Tyrol last month.

Her husband, 54, then slipped. He was able to hang on and get back up again, but the frog tumbled to the depths below.

"We spent two days looking and went home very sad," she said.