We’ve gotta preface this by saying what you’re about to read and see ain’t exactly for the weak of stomach. But it is, ultimately, for a surprisingly good cause.
Up in the north of the vast left half of the country known as Western Australia, authorities have been asking people to perform a reasonably curious task:
They want folks up there to collect cane toads. As many as they can get their hands on.
Not for pest control, or even research purposes. But so they can be fanged off to butchers, run through a mincer, and made into cane toad sausages.
Cane. Toad. Sausages. Froggy snags. Bullfrog bangers. A big tube of amphibian guts.
But if you’re scared that these ~clearly delicious~ treats are gonna wind up on the grill outside your local Bunnings anytime soon, you can breathe a little easier. These particular badboys are not for human consumption.
Rather, the sausages are being put together as part of a taste aversion project, aimed at warding off native animals from eating the highly toxic cane toad carcasses and biting the dust as a result.
The yarn goes that the sausages are placed in specific bait points, then local animals like quolls come over for a nibble, get sick (but not fatally) from the tainted snag, and then develop an aversion to the taste and smell of the toads as a result.
Corrin Everett, who’s the Big Cheez over at the State Cane Toad Initiative project, which is operated by WA Parks & Wildlife, explains the whole scheme thusly:
“The idea is that we feed toad sausages to animals like northern quolls, and their experience in eating that sausage causes vomiting and aversion to the taste of a toad, and the smell of the toad.”
“The work that we have done so far is looking pretty effective. At the moment, it’s looking like between 50 and 70 per cent of the quolls that might be present in a population are taking the sausage and are learning to avoid toads.”
And that’s all well and good. That’s perfectly reasonable. Cane toads are a noted pest in the country, and the poor little native sods are only ever prone to making that mistake once (it’s just that they never get the opportunity to learn from it).
BUT. The process of making the snags has been described by those in charge as being “a bit gory,” owed in large part to the fact that they’re all still being made by hand.
If the thought of churning up frogs wasn’t enough to make you queasy, the oh so kind folk at the ABC have provided a video of the production process.
You know that old saying about how you don’t wanna know how the sausage is made? In this case, you really don’t want to know how the sausage is made.
But in case you are, like me, a complete sadist, here’s a very tempting play button for you to agonise over.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
And while you’re dry heaving at your desk, I have to remind you that this is, very seriously, a good thing that’ll help other animals.
The project, which is based in the Kununurra area of the Kimberley, is looking to take the manufacturing process more… uh… user friendly. Now that the project is expanding, talks are on-going with a factory to mass-produce the snags.
If you’re in the area and keen to help out, you can either drop live caught toads off in a drop box at the project headquarters, or if you’re feeling game, you can drop off frozen frogs that you’ve dealt with yourself via the “cooling and freezing method.”
Seriously though, don’t eat the snags. Whatever you do.
Do. Not. Eat. Toad. Sausages.
Source: ABC News.
