I’m sanitising the  sideboard where I lay my paper down

I’m bleaching the steps at the front and back doors

I’ve got bottles of disinfectant ready for murder, if I must

I’m keeping a squeaky clean house because it’s the Season of the Cane Toad

 

I take my dog’s temperature each time it comes indoors from playing

Just in case, I run random blood tests on the cats in the neighbourhood

They’re quite put out but who takes much notice of a whining cat?

Only dogs who aren’t too tired to chase.

 

It’s their refusal to back down, sitting there

with that hang dog expression upon their already thinned lips that shits me

Bloated, up to a ruler length, they swarm the fields, the streets, the outsides of chip-shops

and pizza-joints, the back exits of hospitals, the exhaust-pipes of trucks.

 

Never seen a cane toad in a cane field yet.

No matter how hard I try to keep the place clean, another one will pop up,

usually in a shady corner I’ve forgotten or missed.

The pacifist in me disappears and I am hell bent on their destruction.

 

Where do they go off season?

Do they all vacation at another location?

Were they just temporarily camouflaged, or were they being

Rendered by some invisible string theory?

 

It’s been a long toad season,

And the poison is an ever bitter bite to taste

Thought they would go when the rains failed

But they stayed, and grew fatter in secret.

 

Recently I’ve seen reports on the news

that every country now has toads

Foreign travel has been banned

But I’m not sure whether it’s for them or us?