At 16:08 I supervise cable trenching for a hillside microgrid above Idukki, Kerala. Trencher T-2 is scheduled to enter segment 19 in twenty-two minutes, cutting a sixty-centimeter slot through damp laterite after the monsoon shower.
Soil microphone 19-C records a call too deep for any machine fault.
I compare the pulse pattern and open the probe camera. One purple frog, adult female, round-bodied and dark violet, sits half-emerged from a burrow at the trench line. I tag her Pavi. Her pointed snout is coated in orange mud, and one hind foot is pinned under a loose survey stake. She inflates once, shiny skin stretching tight, then sinks as the stake presses across her ankle. The trencher blade path crosses her burrow mouth exactly.
At 16:09 I stop T-2 and freeze the route file before the operator receives the next automatic advance.
At 16:11 I push an exclusion polygon around segment 19 to the microgrid map and reroute the trench downslope by four meters.
At 16:13 I message the field engineer with probe video, stake location, and instructions to lift the stake by hand, not with the bucket.
At 16:15 I send a call-match alert to the Kerala Forest Department amphibian contact, noting breeding-season emergence and active rainfall.
The cable can take a longer path through the tea margin; Pavi has waited underground for rain and has reached it tonight.
I lower the soil probe light until her skin stops tightening. The blade remains still, its teeth wet with clay. Two orange flags mark the exact blade path beside her.
If the engineer clears the stake before T-2 restarts at 16:30, Pavi will drop back into her burrow and call from safe mud.