The Big One!
 

URL:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070327...oWehEXgvQrtiBIF

Text:
Group finds toad the size of a small dog 1 hour, 40 minutes ago

DARWIN, Australia - An environmental group said Tuesday it had captured a "monster" toad the size of a small dog.

With a body the size of a football and weighing nearly 2 pounds, the toad is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer.

"It's huge, to put it mildly," he said. "The biggest toads are usually females but this one was a rampant male ... I would hate to meet his big sister."

Frogwatch, which is dedicated to wiping out a toxic toad species that has killed countless Australian animals, picked up the 15-inch-long cane toad during a raid on a pond outside the northern city of Darwin late Monday.

Cane toads were imported from South America during the 1930s in a failed attempt to control beetles on Australia's northern sugar cane plantations. The poisonous toads have proven fatal to Australia's delicate ecosystems, killing millions of native animals from snakes to the small crocodiles that eat them.

As part of its so-called "Toad Buster" project, Frogwatch conducts regular raids on local water holes, blinding the toads with bright lights then scooping them up by the dozen.

"We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process" that renders the toads nontoxic, Sawyer said.

"It turns out to be sensational fertilizer," he added.

Wow! That is a BIG toad! :yikes:

That's fancy talk for "He had a boner!" :p

looks like those cane toads really like their new home. turning them into fertilizer seems like poetic justice somehow...well, it would if toads had a sense of irony. which they don't. :p

Bloody hell that's a huge toad. :yikes:
Making gestures in the air in front of me trying to work out what size that was, made me shudder.




Just as well they put this at the end to take my mind off it...





:roflmao:

Could be worse, REaperWoman. Could be brown tree snakes.

Or crocogators.

Looks like some fine eating to me LOL

<-- plays straightman :cool:

WHAT is a 'crocogator', OldFart? :rolleyes2

Gentlefolk,

Here are a couple of additional links about Australia's cane toad problem.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/...&nbwm=1&nbram=1 (uses RealAuddio)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6499713.stm

What happened to the beetles? :confused:




















:roflmao:

Well a nutter shot 1 about 25 years ago, another died a few years back and paul married a gold digger! and the others ringo and after doing thomas the tank engine i dunno wot hes been upto!

Is the punchline something like, "that's why he's so mean!"