Cane Toads

At this current moment there are about 30 corpses of varying squidgy sizes littered about our acre property. They are mostly flat with a large dent down the middle. This then is the apocalyptic scene that Dave has left behind in the wake of his scourge on cane toads with a large lump of wood this evening.

It is every Australian's duty (so I'm told) to go about murdering these ridiculous creatures as they are a known pest which threatens to wipe out several native Australian species. Which begs the question: What on earth are they doing here then?

It's all to do with sugar cane. It appears that way back in the 1930s, some dork, or possibly a group of dorks, decided that in order to rid Queensland's sugar cane of the cane beetle it would be great if they could introduce a species that would eat the beetles, thereby saving all the cane. Enter the cane toad.

Now, these animals aren't exactly lively. They are sluggish, lazy and totally stupid. They can be identified by the fact that they stumble into view at exactly the wrong moment and have a permanent puzzled frown on their face. Since they are not particularly afraid of humans, they will sit there as death hurtles toward them in the form of a rake handle, golf club or lawn mower - whichever happens to be attached to the human at the time. So it comes as no surprise to learn that once this new force was unleashed against the weapons of mass beetlage, it merely took one look up the sugar cane and decided it couldn't be bothered to climb up. There were tastier treats at ground level.

Even worse, the cane toad is poisonous and sometimes the size of a dinner plate. Any other animal that would normally try to eat it tends to drop dead. So, having no known (successful) predators and needing at least a couple of attempts to club it to death, it is practically indestructable. And breeding like each day is it's last. Which, in our garden, would be correct. Since being intruduced in Northern Queensland, these toads can now be found in New South Wales and the Northern Territory. It's estimated that there are over 200 million of these marching onward toward other states at a rate of 40km per year.

Dave assures me that he will be collecting all the bodies in a bin bag tomorrow morning before I have to clap my delicate lady's eyes on such a bloodbath. That's fine. Just as long as he doesn't try to put them in the kitchen bin like last time. Eeuuww!

And anyway, what IS the collective noun for dorks?

16.3.08 Body count update: This morning Dave went hunting for corpses to put in his bin bag. Out of potentially 30 victims, only 2 were found!!! We can only surmise that something bigger (and now sicker or deader) has come along and eaten the rest of them or they were only pretending to be brown bread - which is quite likely.

Garden creatures in Australia - don't panic!

Well living in the Noosa 'hinterland', near Eumundi, for the last 2 weeks has been interesting. Being in such close proximity to snakes and lizards and stuff has had to make me adjust somewhat!

Mini lizards are cute and interesting to watch until they suddenly disappear into the waiting mouth of a snake you didn't know was lying under the back step. Fortunately, it was 'only' a green tree snake and, although we eyeballed each other suspiciously, it wasn't very interested and slithered back under the step. And at this present moment I can see what I have convinced myself to be a carpet python right outside my window. I would like it to be a carpet python because they aren't dangerous and only bite people when they have been seriously pissed off. They also, apparently, eat the young of other, more poisonous snakes and ensure your mice and rat population are in the past tense. It has fastened itself to the chain which anchors our bird feeder and pointed itself at the bird seed tray, coiled up and ready to spring. It has been in that position all night so we are speculating whether it has in fact died of starvation and rigamortis has set in. It certainly doesn't seem to mind us taking photos of it. Or maybe it's just lulling us into a false sense of security. Either way, our noisy lorikeets and flappy pigeons are notable by their absence! Shame really as yesterday a beautiful king parrot had a nosey at the bird feeder. A sort of grisly curiosity has got me intrigued as to whether a snake of that girth could actually digest a pigeon. Apparently the thing to do if you're worried about having snakes in the garden is to get a dog. The snakes will be put off by the scent.

We've also discovered what has been making the little holes in the front lawn. Not funnel web spiders, as I first worried about after watching a documentary about Fraser Island! But bandicoots! They look like a cross between a rat and a wallaby, and are about the size of rabbit - very odd. And I thought they were just a Sony invention.

(Non poisonous) Snakes and bandicoots I can cope with. Bugs and spiders I'm not very good with, especially if they are flying or running towards me. Redback spiders are ones to watch out for, although I still haven't clapped eyes on one since Diver Dave's been very pro active with the bug spray. They like to lurk about in exterior wall crevices and garden furniture. Like most things, they will only bite if they're upset and you should get immediate medical attention if you're the victim. Huntsman spiders are BLOODY scary looking (especially if you happen to notice one happily sitting on the sanitary bin next to the toilet that you are sitting on in Noosa National Park!), but they aren't aggressive. In fact one Aussie told me about their 80 year old grandmother who would pick them up and lob them out of the window if she ever found any in the house. Since they are about the size and shape of a tarantula, this is no mean feat. She obviously didn't have any fly screens though.

In the evenings we have literally been bombarded with massive suicidal beetles, jovially named Christmas beetles. They seem to bounce off your windows or head and end up breakdancing for hours while they shuffle off this mortal coil. They aren't engineered very well since they cannot upright themselves once toppled over and die if they aren't up righted straight away. What a stupid design fault. I am looking forward to whatever day of Christmas it is when these beetles cease to be.

Meanwhile, we haven't really had any problems so far with mosquitos. this may be because we have a yellow UV light out on the deck which apparently doesn't attract insects (tell that to the xmas beetles). A top tip the estate agent told me was to make sure you empty the water from the trays of any pot plant after rainfall as the stagnant water will attract the mozzies.

Unfortunately, this week Diver Dave had to dispatch a cane toad right outside our front door. Cane toads are officially a pest in Australia and you are supposed to get rid of them straight away by any means possible to try and stop them spreading, which they are doing anyway in their thousands. It's not really their fault. They can blame the farmers in the 1930s who introduced them to eradicate pests in the cane fields. This exercise failed monumentally and only served to introduce a non native species which is seriously poisonous to other, native species.

We had to consult the world wide interweb to confirm identification first though to make sure we weren't about to eliminate a cute native frog. It certainly didn't look very cute. It looked shifty. When they are croaking, these toads are bleedin obvious. They sound like mini jack hammers. But this one wasn't croaking, probably because it knew it was about to. Diver Dave identified it by its poison sacks on either side of its 'shoulders' and promptly used a rake handle. Yuk.

I will update this post with any further worrying wildlife developments!