A Cane Toad Can Kill Your Dog

My neighbors found their dog dead one morning. At first they thought some bad person had poisoned him. But, why would someone poison this scruffy but friendly dog who roams the neighborhood? Robbers have been known to poison guard dogs, but kill a free roaming dog in the middle of the night to rob a house full of sleeping adults and children? It just didn’t make sense. Then, I got to thinking….

We have cane toads here. I have seen a number of them in the streets who had unfortunate encounters with cars. I even had a live one on my terrace one night (before we had our dog). My neighbors said their dog had been foaming at the mouth, like a mouthful of soap. This is one of the symptoms of cane toad toxicity, along with mouth pain, seizures, and death.

Bastard (it could be basta – enough, but it sure sounds like bastard), a typical dog, likes to hunt anything that moves. It is quite possible that he thought catching a cane toad one night was a good fun.

(Photo from cdn4.dogonews.com)

I found this picture on line and though I haven’t carefully inspected the toads I’ve seen here, I’d say they look like this. They are fairly large and would probably cover most of your hand if you held one (but don’t!) They tend to have a bumpy, chubby appearance.

I’m going to miss Bastard. He would run squealing to greet me, and he often sat in the street at night barking at nothing. Well maybe I won’t miss that exactly, but he was part of the fabric of the neighborhood and his death has left a bit of a hole in it.