Green frogs really do occur in toilets, as I discovered this morning upon finding one in our toilet at dawn. I saw a dark, moving blob in the water and flicked on the light switch. There it was, looking up at me in all its vivid greenness, before diving down and swimming out of sight, somewhere.

And crocodiles definitely do swim upstream in the Ross River into my birding and cycling territory, as announced by two warning signs posted by the Bowen Road bridge stating that a crocodile had recently been sighted in that area. I read the warnings while cycling to the fitness equipment and thought, with shivers, of the two young men Vilis and I observed wading in the river’s flooded meadows yesterday morning.

While cycling, I again appreciated Townsville’s abundant birdlife after being away two weeks. Doves, mynas, magpies, and magpie-larks flushed up from the parkway path as I rode, and egrets and white ibises winged overhead. Kookaburras and sulphur-crested cockatoos chortled and screamed in what sounded like a raucous, mudslinging debate, and a family of red-tailed black cockatoos carried on a much more civilized conversation in riverside shrubs. Like a slim, almost neon projectile, a rainbow bee-eater flashed through the air in all its exquisite beauty, causing me to catch my breath and yearn toward its colours like an artist bereft of paints.

Later in the morning, Vilis and I drove to the Thuringowa Soundshell in Townsville’s west end to check out a different kind of abundance – cane toads. As we walked from the Kia toward the outdoor concert venue, we spotted a pair of toad busters hauling in their catch of cane toads (an introduced pest species in Australia) in a big plastic rubbish bin.

“How many toads do you have in there?” I asked.

“Around 20 kilograms,” the man grunted with satisfaction. The woman accompanying him carried more in a smaller container.

With upbeat music, covered pavilions, and adults and children milling about, Townsville’s Toad Day Out event exuded the atmosphere of a small fair. Hot sausages and native plants were free for the taking, and brightly-coloured chairs were set up for anyone needing to take a load off their legs. Media reps from the ABC and the Townsville Bulletin made the rounds interviewing the event organizers and top toad busters, and Ranger Dan Hasling, with an olive python draped around his neck, spoke to the audience about the negative environmental effects of cane toads.

At the centre of all the action, however, were the toad weigh-in stations to which all the toad busters headed with their loads. Cane toad catchers brought toads in garbage bags, in livestock feed bags, in plastic buckets and tubs, and in all sizes of cardboard boxes. Every participant’s haul was weighed and noted, and the largest toads were weighed individually. Draw tickets were awarded to toad busters based on the number of toads they collected. Toad trophies were presented to a couple of teenaged brothers in the over-13 category who bagged both the heaviest cane toad, at 329 grams, and the biggest haul of toads, at 69 kilograms, and to two girls in the under-13 category, who collected 45 kilograms of toads, with their largest toad weighing in at 295 grams.

I listened in on a pair of interviews and learned that the champion teen toad busters had spent a couple of hours last evening in the back of their dad’s car. He drove them to street light after street light, where the cane toads apparently congregate, and at each one, the boys, with help from friends, jumped out and grabbed sackful after sackful of toads. When asked why they did it, one of the brothers responded, “It’s fun. And it helps the environment.” When asked what they thought of the toads, the other brother replied, “Weird. Ugly. And they smell.”

A few stragglers hauled in their captives just before noon, contributing to a grand total of 400 kilograms of cane toads removed from Townsville’s environment in the 2010 Townsville Toad Day Out. That total is up from last year’s, and the goal for next year is 500 kilograms. Go for it, Townsville!

Reference:

1. Alexis Gillham. Toad to Success. Townsville Bulletin, Saturday, March 27, 2010. p. 57; 2. Ibid, p. 48.