Word: bufo
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...patrons in Australia's Queensland have long been accustomed to pass the time by tossing burning cigarette butts out the window, or Ping Pong balls, or whatever other small objects come to hand. Outside, likely as not, sits an all-purpose mini garbage-disposal unit called Bufo marinus, and the beer quaffers amuse themselves by watching this undiscriminating toad gobble up almost anything coming...
...Bufo, a South American native, was drafted into Queensland service by way of Hawaii in 1935 to help get rid of the cane beetle that was threatening the sugar fields. The Aussies got more than they hoped for. Supplementing its diet with varied and copious helpings of other insects and frogs, the cane toad may live for 40 years, grow to be eight inches long and three pounds in weight, produce up to 40,000 eggs a year, kill cats and dogs with a glandular poison it secretes, and upset the natural balance of some areas...
...Bufo marinus is a vacuum cleaner...
...head off such a national calamity, the Wild Life Department came up with a bounty of $30 per Bufo, and the Darwin Conservation Society put up another $7.50. When angry cattle farmers, fearing that the toads would eat the dung beetles that eat disease-spreading flies, demanded that the education department pay a $1,500 reward for each toad, the federal government in Canberra countered that such an absurdly high bounty might lead to the clandestine import of more toads from Queensland. Anticipating that, the Northern Territory promised to fine all Bufo bootleggers...
State pest-controllers are mobilizing against the marching marauders, but they face an uphill fight. Achatina, whose body can grow as long as a foot, has so few natural enemies that it can roam almost anywhere. Plagued by other recent invaders-the Bufo toad from Central America and the Asian walking catfish-Florida biologists are reluctant to import any anti-snail predators, such as the India glowworm, the hermit crab, or even more Bufos, which are known to feed on the young snails. Instead, they have begun careful spraying with insecticide (granules of metaldehyde mixed with tricalcium arsenide...