TheBanyanTree: Toads

[JMoney]

Well.  The cane toads are here - nasty, disgusting, evil-looking things.
Someone just a couple of k away, has found one in her backyard.

Actually her Jack Russells found it and it was their agitation that got her
to go and take a look.  By then the toad had sprayed the dogs with its
poison so they had to be taken to the vet.  I presume they survived.

The toad, however, is now an ice block.  Putting them in your freezer is
recommended as the humane way to kill them.  Doesn't strike me as
particularly humane, or hygienic.  Strikes me as being about as humane as
putting them in cold water and bringing it to the boil.  I'm for the
whack-em-on-the-head-with-a-shovel approach.

The toads have been down at Katherine for about twelve months now.  People
there say that they can see hundreds on their lawns at night so I'm thinking
that toad whacking could be a good form of exercise, particularly since it
would be most efficiently done during a cool time of day.  Set up a light
and they will come.  Then swing away.  Fat lot of good it would do to bring
down the population but I could do with the exercise.

People down at Katherine also say that the wildlife has diminished severely.
Cane toads eat just about everything and whatever eats them tends to die.
Even crocs.  Crows, some say, have learned to eat them from the underside.
But eagles, hawks and kites don't seem to be so smart.

Some small furry animals - quolls, I think - have been resettled on an off
shore island in an attempt to prevent the toads from driving them to
extinction.  And someone was pushing to have the Coburg peninsula securely
fenced off to create a safe habitat.  But you know what?  Cane toads swim.
Sailors have found them paddling along happily far out in the Gulf of
Carpentaria.  At least that's what I read in one paper.

We have quite a few little skinks in our yard.  They run along like racers
on their hind legs and when they stop running they wave one fore paw.  In
the wet season the frogs come out.  I think by next dry we will have no more
skinks or frogs.  We won't have any ground-nesting birds.  There will be no
more goannas or frill-neck lizards or little bush mice.  We will have only
cane toads.  Too bad that our various governments have just sat and watched
this happen.  Come to Kakadu folks.  Come and see the cane toads.

Janice