So what if it is a few days late? You guys are all probably still eating leftovers anyway!!!!
Got the pumpkin ready to cook up this morning, the turkey breast roll in the freezer ready to pop in the oven,and all of the other goodies ready to go later today!!! But most importantly—I have gas in the tank again! Woohoo!!! We may be sweating while I have the oven going but we will eat well tonight!!!
One thing that I forgot to blog about yesterday was our fascination with the cane toads which are a HUGE pest here. They virtually have no predator and so they just multiply and are everywhere all of the time. They are huge and disgusting and about the only thing that the locals say kills them is freezing them. Now I don’t think I really want a bunch of toads in my freezer (I am not my brother Mark after all!!) but it is interesting at what lengths people will go to to eradicate this plague on Australia!!! The funny thing is at night when they come out on the roads—the past couple of weekends we have been driving a lot at night in the sugar cane areas which of course are thick with toads. Well, Chris has a new game—-Toad Time—which he declares loudly and swerves to hit them!! some make a huge popping sound and others just quietly meet their maker. This may upset some of the environmentalists out there but I have not found one Australian yet that wants to protect them. Anyway, I am very bad at Toad Time—I think I only hit one. I did find an article in the Daily Telegraph which I will paste below that talks about this lovely creature!!!
WHAT do you do if you see a cane toad? Here’s some handy advice for dealing with this dreaded Qld critter.
Freezing has been suggested as the most humane form of killing cane toads. When put into a freezer, a cane toad will become dormant as a reaction to the cold. And don’t worry, they won’t make Alfie Langer-like comebacks when you take them out to make room for ice cream.
The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service recently warned Sydneysiders to be on the lookout for cane toads after one was discovered at Quakers Hill.
The cane toad can be identified by its size (up to 15 centimetres long), warty appearance, a large gland behind the ear and pointed, bony ridges between the nose and eyes. A bit like Russ Hinze, really.
More information to help tell frog from toad can be found at www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au
Earlier this month Sydney scientists said that they believed they may have found a chink in the armour of one of Australia’s biggest environmental pests.
Sydney University’s John Llewelyn and Crystal Kelehear are part of a group known as Team Bufo, named after the cane toad, Bufo marinus.
The team has identified a parasitic worm that attacks the toad’s lungs, stunting their growth and, in most, cases killing them. Perhaps they should nickname the worm Willie Mason.
“It’s a pretty exciting set of results”, team leader Professor Rick Shine said.
“They kill a large number of the small toads that we infected.”
According to Professor Shine, if toads in Northern Territory and northern NSW were infected by the parasite, it may be possible to slow their advance quite dramatically.
It’s also important to check for cane toad eggs. They are black and laid in water in long necklaces.
The necklaces are clear jelly – a bit like the defence of the Maroons’ backline.
Most frogs lay their eggs as a mass of foam or clumps of jelly in water or land nests, or in holes in moist areas. An individual cane toad can attach up to 35,000 eggs to water plants or debris in slow-moving or still water. Cane toad tadpoles are very dark, their tails are short compared with their body size and they gather in pub beer gardens. When native tadpoles hatch, they feed on decaying plant material and gradually develop legs before changing into frogs.
