Australian Thoughts at the Weekend 22nd and 23rd August 2009.

Australian Thoughts at the Weekend 22nd and 23rd August 2009.

[ This is a busy weekend for the Gold Coast Temple Band who will be visiting Grafton about 3.5 hours away in northern New South Wales. The main events will be a program on Saturday night, a worship meeting on Sunday morning and an outdoor concert in a tourist park on Sunday afternoon. Therefore this email is a repeat of one first published in October 2004. For those interested in Ozzie rhyming slang our band is “hitting the frog and toad” – the road to Grafton. ]

Frogs and Toads

Early this morning I read an email about frogs. Since then as I have been working on chores around the house, I have been thinking about frogs. They are fascinating creatures.

I think I was about 4 and a half when I encountered my first frog. Yes, my early childhood was deprived of such wonders. I lived in Melbourne then so some might think that was normal. It was when I moved to Brisbane and lived at “Grandpop’s and Grandma’s” for a few months that I discovered frogs. Actually it was one frog. It was a big green treefrog which sat on Grandpop’s front steps each night and caught insects. I never saw it catch any insects but Grandpop said that was what they were doing.

My mother told me not to touch it or I would get warts. I remember one night when no one was looking, I picked it up. It was my first experience of loss of bladder control when frightened. The frog’s bladder, not mine. I was worried for a while but I never got warts where my hand was wet. I guess I was lucky. I also got to know the frog’s call it was a deep ‘crow-k’. It crow-ked a lot when it was raining. Dad told me it was telling other frogs it was happy it was raining. I wondered if that was the way frogs thanked God for rain.

I started school about a year after we moved to Brisbane. The school year starts at the end of January, and that is also the wettest time of the year. I learnt about walking to and from school in the heaviest of tropical downpours. It was also then that I learnt that the puddles contained tadpoles. Tadpoles, I learnt, grew legs, lost their tales and became frogs. We collected them and kept them in a lot of bottles on the windowsill. It was great to watch them swimming around. It was much more interesting than what the teacher wrote on the blackboard.

I learnt another lesson about the same time. That was my father had a very strict list of “appropriate pets”. It wasn’t a long list. It included canaries, one dog and chooks (chickens). That was it. Although there was talk of goldfinches, greenfinches and Gouldian finches from his days long past. I tested his list firstly with tadpoles. I had to take them back to where I got them from. Dad didn’t want the place infested with frogs. I tested the list at other times with pigeons, and lizards but they were definitely ‘out’. Budgerigars joined the list when I was older and finches and parrots when I could afford to keep them.

Anyway back to frogs. Another frog I learnt to love was a small flat brown one. It came wrapped in foil. Of, course it was a chocolate frog. I remember my sister and me getting a chocolate frog each on Saturday night after the Open Air Meeting. Mum and Dad shared a block of chocolate while we had the chocolate frogs.

I soon learnt there was a variety of frogs and toads that were native to our area. They were always good to bring to school for “news” and to add to the collection on display. We looked in books to try to see which ones we had but most of the books we had were English or American. So we just knew that John’s was the same as the one Kevin brought a few weeks ago.

I don’t know when I discovered my first cane toad. These were big brown warty toads. Common knowledge said that Australian Toads do not grow as big as they did. They were at 20cm (8 inches) about twice the size of my Grandpop’s green tree frog.
Common knowledge also said these cane toads were “badies”. Any living cane toad had to be sent to toad heaven by the quickest and sometimes cruellest way possible.

Cane toads love two things. Well, three but the third one comes naturally. The love insects and they have learnt that insects gathered under lights. So cane toads like Grandpop’s frog hunted insects wherever there was a light turned on. The other thing they like is water and even a dish of water, such as the pet’s dish will attract them. A cane toad will sit by a dish of water and call for its mates. It has in mind its third love and wants a mate to share the water where they can leave fertilised eggs.

Cane Toads (Giant American or Marine Toads) were introduced to Queensland in the mid 1930’s to eat beetles that were a pest for sugar cane farmers. The beetle’s larvae stopped the cane growing successfully. They soon spread across Queensland and became a noted pest. A cane toad has poison glands on the back of its head. Dogs and other domestic pets as well as native animals and birds have become very sick and died after consuming cane toads. A few birds, including crows seem to have learnt how to consume a cane toad while avoiding the poison glands. A crow will flip over a cane toad and consume it from the soft underbelly thus avoiding the poison glands.

Cane Toads continue to spread and there is a worry that they will reach Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. There seems to be less concern that they will move much further south than there current range as it seems they cannot tolerate the colder weather.

There are two concerns today of nature lovers. Many people are breeding native frogs and toads in pools and ponds around their homes. Groups have been established in many areas to preserve them and they share methods as well as frogs and tadpoles. Dad would not be pleased.

On the other hand, other groups have been organised to have cane toad eradication parties where people with gather at a creek or parkland with ponds or lakes and armed with torches, gloves and plastic bags will see out the cane toads. Any toads thy find will be taken home and put to death by freezing. This is the suggested method which doesn’t have the cruelty of golf clubs, spades, axes or car wheels.

The story which commenced all these thoughts is worth sharing and I thank Elnora Lee who shared the story with us through the Salvation Army Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/salvationarmy3/.

There once was a bunch of tiny frogs,
...who arranged a running competition.

The goal was to reach the top of a very high tower.

A big crowd had gathered around the tower to see the race and cheer on the contestants...

The race began...

Honestly...No one in the crowd really believed that the tiny frogs would reach the top of the tower.

You heard statements such as:

"Oh, WAY too difficult !!"

"They will NEVER make it to the top!!"

or:

"Not a chance that they will succeed. The tower is too high!!"

The tiny frogs began collapsing. One by one...Except for those, who in a fresh tempo, were climbing higher and higher...

The crowd continued to yell, "It is too difficult!!! No one will make it!!"

More tiny frogs got tired and gave up...But ONE continued higher and higher and higher...

This one wouldn't give up!

At the end everyone else had given up climbing the tower. Except for the one tiny frog who, after a big effort, was the only one who reached the top!

THEN all of the other tiny frogs naturally wanted to know how this one frog managed to do it?

A contestant asked the tiny frog how he had found the strength to succeed and reach the goal?

It turned out...That the winner was DEAF!!!

The wisdom of this story is:

Never listen to other people's tendencies to be negative or pessimistic... Because they take your most wonderful dreams and wishes away from you...the ones you have in your heart!!!


Always think of the power words have. Because everything you hear and read will affect your actions!!!

Therefore:

ALWAYS be...POSITIVE!!!

And above all:

Be DEAF when people tell YOU that you can not fulfil your dreams!!!

Always think:

God and I can do this !

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