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FORT PIERCE TRIBUNE (Florida) 18 October 05 Readers say keep pet safe, then go kill that bufo toad (Anthony Westbury)
It's no accident that many fairy tales cast a toad as the bad guy. Everyone seems to hate the ugly, slimy creatures, and Scripps Treasure Coast Newspaper readers are no exception.
That's one verdict readers reached in response to last week's column about bufo toads. The other message — received loud and clear in a raft of e-mails, voice mails, old-fashioned letters to the editor, and comments on our Web site — is that Koby's owner must bear some responsibility for the dog's death by toxic toad.
Dog owner Wayne Welsh of Port St. Lucie put it well when he said, "the real issue I had with the content of your column was the Gatelys' response to this unfortunate event. Rather than look square in the mirror, they want to blame somebody else for their dog dying because of the bufo. ... If you know your dog goes after these things, why do you leave that dog in your yard unattended?"
Welsh went on to compare the family's "flirting with disaster" with "the same kind of thinking that is used with people not wearing seat belts, choosing to smoke, (or) not wearing a helmet on a motorcycle..."
Karla Roe, in a posting on TCPalm.com, agreed and asked "I don't understand why people get pets they say are part of the family, but leave them outdoors. Do you make the rest of your family live outdoors?"
Several dog owners called it inhumane to keep any animal outside in our Florida heat. As a dog owner myself, I'm not sure I can go along with that entirely (a friend asked, "What'll they ask for next, air conditioning for cows?", but I can appreciate the argument for keeping animals inside as much as possible, even if it's just for pest-control reasons.
Speaking of pests, readers' recipes for ridding the planet of bufo toads had to be the most entertaining responses to the original column. PETA and ASPCA officials please stop reading here — you might not like what you see.
"Get a cheap bottle of ammonia," Martha Bennett advised, "put a squirt top on it and when you see one, give it a good dose on the back. It will die within minutes."
Many of you advocated the ammonia defense; two readers recommended Pine-Sol ("it must be full-strength," one lady said in a voice mail). There were several bleach boosters (Clorox seems to be the brand of choice).
Some readers were pretty bloodthirsty in their passionate defense of pets. One lady pointed out that running them over with the lawn mower is pretty final for toads.
James Cushman of Port Salerno recommends a BB gun.
"I can hit them at 20 yards now. I'm getting good," he chuckled.
Another lady agreed that Clorox works well, but said that "when they go in my swimming pool, of course I use my machete."
Helen Burney, of Fort Pierce, 86, only started noticing the toads about five years ago, and she's lived in the same place near a canal since 1939. A nice, caring former teacher, Burney would probably be offended by the gory methods other readers have no qualms about.
Her grandson devised a relatively benign toad termination method. First, she catches them in a minnow net then transfers them to a five-gallon bucket containing cotton balls soaked in alcohol. The toads die within a few hours, she says.
One last comment about the "humane" method of bufo disposal preferred by scientists. Catch your toad, put it in a plastic bag and pop it in the freezer for at least three days, they advise. Not always such a safe alternative, another friend warned.
One particularly feisty bufo, not content with dying quietly, broke out of the bag and proceeded to run amok inside the freezer, defecating everywhere.
"Not only are you NEVER going to do that again," his furious wife announced, "you're going to go out now and buy me a new refrigerator!"
That's, I toad-aly promise, the last word on bufos you'll read here.
Readers say keep pet safe, then go kill that bufo toad

Those people disgust me.

I'd like to run them over with lawnmowers, or shoot them with guns.

Or spray ammonia in their eyes.

They are the reason I prefer the company of my amphibian friends over the scum of the earth

This makes me outraged and want to cry all at the same time!! I mean this is a living creature with nerve endings !! how dare any human be so cruel. I dont think anyone would like to be shot at with a burning chem till they die or be frozen to death and not be able to fight back. I saw a different article on this before where there was a pic of a poor toad with one of its eyes burned out because of some acid. I cried for days. I love these lil guys so much its unbelievable just unbelievable

I totally agree with you creepy & bluefire. These ppl need to be done the same way they kill these wonderful creatures. It's not their fault they can thrive in a place they are not native. People brought them there to control the cane beetle and it turned around and bit them in the @$$ and now they act like it was no fault of theirs. So they encourage ppl to eliminate them at all costs. They could all send them to me at their cost of course.

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"I am all that is Divine, I am all that is Evil.
I am the one who brings forth Death,
On the wings of a Weevil." JSKII