If you are bored by the teley at an evening like I am prone to be, why not take a constitutional around the garden with torch in hand harvesting Cane Toads .
Rather than stay in, on a good night out I can capture, with my bare hands, a dozen toads.
...creatures who for the most part freeze in the torch light so that I can sweep them up in my plastic bag covered hand.
I bag up because of their poisonous glands around their headspace.
With up to 5 toads in my mitt and with their little hearts beating against my palm, I ferry them to a yogurt bucket in the freezer and allow chilling cold to do the rest.
I am improving my hunting skills and toad dispatch.
To kill a toad humanely, the easiest approach is to pick the animal up (gloves are a good idea, to ensure you don’t get exposed to the toad’s poison!) and put it in a plastic bag, then pop the bag into the fridge. After a few hours the toad will be pretty much asleep (although still very much alive) and you can pop the bag into the freezer. Leave it there for a long time – preferably a few days – because there are lots of stories about apparently-frozen toads coming back to life if they haven’t spent long enough in the freezer! ref
Once per week -- out they go with the garbage.
So if you are looking for a productive hobby -- something to do at night before bed -- relax with a Cane Toad hunt...a do a little something for local ecology.
Cane toads attain high population densities after colonisation and consume large volumes of invertebrates. While larval Cane Toads are algal, detritus and suspension feeders, metamorphling, juvenile and adult Cane Toads feed on a broad variety of small prey items, predominantly ground dwelling arthropods. Cane Toads are thought to consume approximately 200 food items per night, far more prey than most native frogs ingest in the same period. The bulk of the diet is usually ants, beetle and termites, although they can eat anything that fits in their mouth including a wide variety of insects, frogs, small reptiles, mammals and birds. In addition, Cane Toads have the potential to compete with native species for food and shelter sites. The ability of the Cane Toad to rapidly expand both its range and density and to consume relatively large numbers of a wide variety of prey has led to concern that the Cane Toad is a key factor in the decline in of many native species. Ref
