Raising cane !!

1 ANSWERS

1. Saba
   

   The cane toad was brought to Australia for pest control - since when an army has marched across the continent, multiplying as it goes. But surely its own example questions the logic of trying to wipe out this gamekeeper turned poacher, says Clive James.
   
   People who despair for the future of life on Earth should take heart from the capacity of living creatures to adapt when threatened. In the last few days there has been news about an inspiring instance of this capacity. Once again the focus of international media interest is on my homeland, Australia.
   
   I speak of the cane toad. The size of a cheap handbag and covered in warts, the cane toad can be found in many parts of Australia. Indeed the cane toad can be found in so many parts of Australia that experts predict there will be soon no part of Australia in which at least one cane toad, or more likely several thousand cane toads, cannot be found.
   
   Clive James
   
   In such a climate of glory, even a cane toad looked good. Not as good as Clark Gable, perhaps, but at least as good as Charles Laughton
   
   Hear Radio 4's A Point of View
   
   No matter what the degree of force and ingenuity employed, there has so far been no getting rid of the cane toad. We are invited to worry about this, but I prefer to be encouraged, and to worry just that little bit less about Iranian atomic bombs, North Korean multi-stage rockets, and the imminent immersion of the inhabited world under a rising ocean dotted with the charred corpses of polar bears. Earthly life-forms are tough, and the career of the cane toad shows just how tough they can be.
   
   You probably know most of the cane toad story already because my country of origin, in order to ensure that its high standard of living should not be threatened by a population of excessive size, has a kind of anti-tourist board dedicated to making Australia look less attractive than it might be in the eyes of the world. After World War II, the anti-tourist board spread stories through overseas outlets about Australia's teeming range of poisonous spiders and snakes.
   
   There were stories of the red-back spider that hides under the toilet seat to avoid publicity, and the taipan snake that was so poisonous it could kill a man on a horse after killing the horse, and would do both these things unprovoked, because it liked publicity. The anti-tourist board was scarcely obliged to exaggerate.
   
   Anti-tourist board
   
   Australian spiders and snakes are really like that. So you're a prospective migrant and you're afraid of getting bitten a little bit? What are you, a man or a mouse? If you're a mouse, you've got no business going near a taipan anyway.

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