{"id":67300,"date":"2020-06-27T15:38:51","date_gmt":"2020-06-27T19:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=67300"},"modified":"2020-06-27T15:59:49","modified_gmt":"2020-06-27T19:59:49","slug":"season-of-the-cane-toad-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/season-of-the-cane-toad-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Season of The Cane Toad: 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sanitising the\u00a0 <\/span>sideboard where I lay my paper down<\/p>\n

I\u2019m bleaching the steps at the front and back doors<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got bottles of disinfectant ready for murder, if I must<\/p>\n

I\u2019m keeping a squeaky clean house because it\u2019s the Season of the Cane Toad<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I take my dog\u2019s temperature each time it comes indoors from playing<\/p>\n

Just in case, I run random blood tests on the cats in the neighbourhood<\/p>\n

They\u2019re quite put out but who takes much notice of a whining cat?<\/p>\n

Only dogs who aren\u2019t too tired to chase.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s their refusal to back down, sitting there<\/p>\n

with that hang dog expression upon their already thinned lips that shits me<\/p>\n

Bloated, up to a ruler length, they swarm the fields, the streets, the outsides of chip-shops<\/p>\n

and pizza-joints, the back exits of hospitals, the exhaust-pipes of trucks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Never seen a cane toad in a cane field yet.<\/p>\n

No matter how hard I try to keep the place clean, another one will pop up,<\/p>\n

usually in a shady corner I\u2019ve forgotten or missed.<\/p>\n

The pacifist in me disappears and I am hell bent on their destruction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where do they go off season?<\/p>\n

Do they all vacation at another location?<\/p>\n

Were they just temporarily camouflaged, or were they being<\/p>\n

Rendered by some invisible string theory?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a long toad season,<\/p>\n

And the poison is an ever bitter bite to taste<\/p>\n

Thought they would go when the rains failed<\/p>\n

But they stayed, and grew fatter in secret.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recently I\u2019ve seen reports on the news<\/p>\n

that every country now has toads<\/p>\n

Foreign travel has been banned<\/p>\n

But I’m not sure whether it\u2019s for them or us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sanitising the\u00a0 sideboard where I lay my paper down I\u2019m bleaching the steps at the front and back doors I\u2019ve got bottles of disinfectant ready for murder, if I must I\u2019m keeping a squeaky clean house because it\u2019s the Season of the Cane Toad…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1278,"featured_media":67339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,441],"tags":[3441,3677,374,3682,3679,3678,789,3475,384,3681,3680],"class_list":["post-67300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompt-responses","tag-jlnash","tag-canetoad","tag-cat","tag-chip","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid19","tag-dog","tag-janenash","tag-pizza","tag-ruler","tag-sanitising"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1278"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67300"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67391,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67300\/revisions\/67391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}