With the onset of the rainy season where I live we are getting 4-5 inches of rain nightly. This year this has brought out in vaster numbers than usual the toad population.
Each toad averages the size of a size 10 boot and has no road sense at all, so that each journey down my street in the car is a series of squelches. By mid-day next day with the heat of the sun there are a large number of dessicated corpses about 1/2" thick being toyed with by stray dogs.
Should I:
(a) contact the local witches' coven for help - the witch community here is very active; Growlette is one herself;
(b) try to summon up some ethical reason why I shouldn't drive and walk to the pub in my wellies instead while navigating armies of leaping toads; (nope, strike THAT one);
(c) think positively how leathery toad skins can be recycled to give millions of people gainful employment at US$0.25 a day making handbags to be sold in Hong Kong to European tourists for hundreds of dollars under designer names like House of Toad; or key rings, or cigarette lighter covers, or Filofaxes;
(d) start a contest with the neighbours to see how many toads each of us can nab in our cars between here and the end of the street. I've got 5 bucks says I can get 30 - that sort of thing.
The last one sounds like rhe most fun.
Gentlemen, start your engines.
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I can't believe you're even asking.
(d)
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Adam
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Well, one is so used to being told to be nice to one's co-existent species by all these pimply seat warmers who failed their IQ tests on the selection programme for supermarker shelf stockers and who are thus reduced to who appearing on BBC and who have yet to find any gainful means of employment let alone any that contributes to the growth of human capital as opposed to expending it I thought I should at least make the effort.
We have already read in these columns how dangerous the front clearance is on SUV's yet by some warped bearded open-toed sandal logic it's OK on Transits because that do useful things like delivering things. By extension of this argument it is presumably tragic but sort-of OK for a youngster to get macerated by White Van Man but when it comes to Ms Amelia Partington-Phipps in her Nissan Patrol who does aactio of the mileage and behaves rather betteron the road than most Transit drivers I've observed, that's not good enough at all.
So Toads, I hate to say it, but you are handbag material.
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At least run over them first, then consider them for use as hadbags.
Fun and practical at the same time!
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Adam
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Definitely c, but call the brand GRowler and save the Toad tag for the products: "Purse of Toad," "Shoe of Toad," "Jacket of Toad," "Tiny G-String of Toad," and so on.
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(d)
But if Toad, of toad hall was still posting I'm sure he'd be distraught by now.
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(d) But I take it my Toad (the Supra, so named because it says "TOAD" on little stickers in the rear side windows announcing the security system) might be disqulified on the ground that the 255 rear tyres would give it an unfair advantage.
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Reminds me when Nicole and I went to see Brother in Law in Singapore. After a sudden wet afternoon and a very steamy evening we went out for a walk, whereupon Papa stepped on, squished and slipped over a very large, fat and wet frog.
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But I bet the "very steamy evening" made up for it, eh?? ;)
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Gentlemen, start your engines.
...That should be:
Gentlemen, start your enzimes.
Get them in the pot!
...or make some sort of scoop to bolt the the front of your car to safely scoop them up (before depositing them later) or push the little fellas out of the way.
------
If you want to get ahead - get a Van!
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It only takes one toad to change a lightbulb.
But you have to remember which one used to be an electrician.
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These wouldn't happen to be the infamous poisonous cane toads by any chance? I did hear that the Phillipines had got them as well as Australia. If they are no matter how many you kill there will always be hundreds of thousands more.
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Could well be. Never heard of the perishers but will check them out. No good asking a local: "oh, they're just toads, they'll be gone when the rain dries up". Like my neigbour, who found a king cobra in his backyard. I asked what he did it and he said he picked it up and threw it in the garbage so it couldn't get out. Granted the cobra is a fairly timid chap who would rather hide than bite, but all the same I wouldn't like to be one of those workers who pick over discarded garbage for a living.......
Translated into motoring the same ethic for a ding reads as "so what, it's only a car".
Meanwhile my nightly constitutional to the pub will be made on four wheels and not two feet!
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Reminds me of a bit of film on TV whilst living in Oz....shows a car driving down a road in northern Queensland zig-zagiging trying to hit as many toads as possible.
StarGazer
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