Dear God, why me?

So I arrived back in Darwin on the red-eye after six lovely days in Melbourne. I knew the rot had set in from the moment I got on the check-in queue, for one thing, I was queuing with Darwinites. Just to enlighten those people who don't know, and invite some flaming hate mail from Territorians, that means a bunch of people with no sense of humour and very little patience or understanding. I could go on here, but I don't really have the time or inclination to go into the reasons why hanging with the Darwinites makes me feel like I'm back in high school again (and not in a good, no job or responsibility way, more in an everyone is staring at me because I just said the wrong thing and don't fit in with the popular crowd way). Instead I shall discuss one of the other joys of the Territory - cane toads.

All was well when I got home last night- Steffi was so excited Mummy was home that she was running around in circles and was not frothing at the mouth from playing with one of her favourites ugly, slimy, living toys. After a good half hour being slobbered to death (Steffi) and having my nose chewed off (Digger) I took myself off to bed and slept without the aid of an airplane seat. Yay! This morning, however, as I was taking the rubbish out I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. It was too small, slow and dark to be Digger on another escape attempt so I didn't really pay much attention. Until I realised that it looked distinctly toad like.

My first thought was that I had never seen one out in the daylight before. My second thought was, great, now I have to pick it up. Things just got better from there. As I watched it, I realised that Toady was not hopping so much as dragging. Yes, that's right, we had a paralysed cane toad in our yard. I can take a pretty good guess as to how it got that way- involving something brown and excitable that loves licking feet. One should always start the day by disposing of poisonous fauna with broken backs

On the bright side I have now confirmed my theory that the cane toads aren't killing Steffi because she just plays with them until they no longer move enough to amuse her, thus not ingesting enough of the poison. Who woulda thunk that her sadistic streak/criminally short attention span was a life saver?