Creapiest sign of spring – 11 Adders found.

Swedish article in Metro. About finding Adders (Vipera berus) in the spring. It is a friend of mine that submitted the article.

Australian toad-busters hunt Cane Toads

By Nick Squires in Darwin

Last Updated: 9:07am GMT 13/03/2007

Fact box A new recruit to a growing army of volunteers, Marilyn Bartels shines her torch into the dripping mangrove swamp in search of her prey. “I find them repulsive. I caught three on my first outing,” she says, probing the darkness for Australia’s most reviled alien invader – the cane toad.   Frogwatch’s Graeme Sawyer with his night’s bounty of toads. The toad-busters admit they are fighting a rearguard action Just over seventy years after being introduced from Hawaii to Queensland in a failed attempt to wipe out sugar cane beetles, the toads have finally reached Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory. Bartels, a 57-year-old accountant, is one of 30 volunteers to gather in cloying humidity for the latest cane toad ‘muster’ on the outskirts of the city, in which as many toads as possible are caught and killed. It is estimated that more than 100 million bufo marinus have hopped and croaked their way across the tropical north of the continent, but Australians are now fighting back.     “We won’t be able to wipe them out, but by killing as many as we can, we can minimise their impact,” says Graeme Sawyer, the co-ordinator of the city’s toad-busting efforts. “If you just let them breed, there would be absolute devastation.” The volunteers, equipped with powerful torches and clear plastic sacks, fan out into the darkness. Almost immediately two of the enemy are spotted, scooped up and bagged. The toads are despised not just for their warty skin and gargantuan size – large adults resemble and are the size of half-deflated footballs – poison glands on their backs make them deadly to the crocodiles, lizards, snakes and birds which attempt to eat them. The result is devastating to indigenous wildlife.

Alligator On The Loose In Rockland County

Mount Ivy, N.Y.  –  A three-and-a-half foot long alligator is missing in Mount Ivy in Rockland County.Haverstraw Town police say the reptile was taken shortly after a home invasion by three men with assault rifles – bursting into a mobile home off of Route 202 yesterday morning.

A 37-year-old woman alone in the mobile home told police she hid in a closet as the men ransacked her place. She called police at 2:20 a-m yesterday.

Police don’t know if anything was taken.

However when police went to investigate the robbery they saw the pet alligator.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation was called to take custody of the alligator, but a D-E-C Spokeswoman says the reptile was missing when the conservation officer got there.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call Haverstraw police at 845-354-1500.

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