From Newscripts, C&E News, October 16, 2006
"Neither death nor postmortem pulverization, it seems, can stop cane toads from terrorizing the good people of Australia. The makers of TOADJUS, a liquid "fertilizer made from mashed up cane toads, recently warned gardeners "down under" that the product may spontaneously explode.
Cane toads have been the scourge of Australia ever since Aussie farmers imported 102 of the bumpy beasts to fight sugarcane pests in the 1930s. It was nothing short of an environmental disaster. With a toxic skin that poisoned any potential Aussie predators, the amphibians proliferated. As many as 100 million cane toads now hop throughout northeastern Australia, gobbling up just about everything except the aforementioned pests.
Killing cane toads has become something of an avocation amongst Aussies, but what to do with all those warty corpses? The environmental group FrogWatch NT decided the croaked croakers could give back to the continent if they were liquidized and made into fertilizer.
Unfortunately, the first batch of ToadJus hadn't ripened adequately before it was bottled, according to FrogWatch NT's Graeme Sawyer. He told the Australian news website News.com.au that residual fermentation causes pressure to build up in the bottles, which then explode leaving a harmless but evil-smelling, sticky liquid on kitchen shelves and gardening shed walls.
Sawyer suggests unscrewing the caps on unused bottles of ToadJus by half a turn to relieve pressure, adding, "I would particularly warn people against sending the novelty product to friends through the post."
10-19-2006, 10:17 AM
Exploding Toads 
