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.