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Nov 18, 2023

Florida’s Killer TOADS

By Staff | on June 01, 2023 John

By Staff | on June 01, 2023

John Davis and Meredith Nail have been close friends and shoulder-to-shoulder neighbors for years. They have adjoining homes in a crowded condominium community, they share the same backyard, and they share shopping and pet-tending.

They have, nowadays, six dogs between them, three each.

They also share keys or front door codes to help each other when one is absent and a need arises.

So Davis, assistant news director and commentator for WGCU-FM public radio, which broadcasts from Marco Island north to Sarasota on the southwest coast, was only a little surprised when he awoke the other day and stepped into his kitchen to find this note left on his counter, from Meredith: "Killed Adult Male in Backyard."

He thought he’d known her. An adult male? Whoever he was, he probably deserved it, Davis figured. Apparently, she’d left the body out there for Davis to find, which seemed uncharacteristically rude.

But the adult male in question had it coming, and she’d already disposed of the body, as Davis soon discovered.

It was a cane toad, now newly deceased, one of the highly prolific invasive breeders capable of growing to almost three times the size of Florida native toads — 9 inches in some individuals but typically 5 to 7.

Also known as a Bufo toad (from its one-time scientific classification, Bufo marinus), a marine toad, a giant toad or probably just an invasive SOB of a toad, it's a squarish creature roughly the size of an open human hand with two triangular glands on its shoulders containing a potent milky toxin.

"The females have smooth, mottled, brown and white backs; males have more yellowish backs, with rough skin. Baby cane toads developed from tadpoles are the size of raisins," notes Steve Johnson, a professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida's and an amphibian and reptile expert whose publications and video presentations through the Institute of Food and Agricultural Science can greatly help people understand and control cane toads.

Links to that information are included with this story.

He's careful to give them thorough descriptions because pet owners and neighborhood do-gooders are going to kill cane toads once they realize how much of a threat they can prove to be. But that comes with a significant potential drawback in the uneducated: they might accidentally kill the native and valuable southern or oak toads, creatures smaller than adult cane toads, or the toad-like eastern spadefoot.

The natives range in size from 1.5 inches in the little oak toad, to about 3 inches in the southern toad and spadefoot. The glands of these toads are much smaller and less distinct than those of cane toads — and they can't kill dogs or cats.

Jeff McCullers, who lives in the south Lee County neighborhood where he grew up in an orange grove, now a thickly suburban place populated in part by dog owners and lovers, notes with some humor the propensity to shoot first and ask questions later.

"I am unconvinced that I personally have ever encountered a dread cane toad," he says, "but a good portion of my neighbors seemed convinced that any and all hopping amphibians are of necessity murderous slavering cane toads come to drag their Fifi to across the River Styx."

JOHNSON

Killer creatures

But the cane toad is a killer, not of people but of pets, as Davis knows too well from experience.

The toxic secretion in its glands can kill dogs or any other creatures that bite them or swallow the poison, although it is toxic but not a dangerous threat to people who touch it.

He learned that the hard way three years ago, when his beloved little dog and closest companion for six years found a cane toad on the lanai.

Davis had described the moment in a brief social media post.

"This morning, Finn got into it with a poisonous cane toad on the porch. Meredith Nail and I flew to the emergency vet hospital, but he didn't make it. This still doesn't feel real."

He’d done everything right, but little Finn, in addition to being little, was fast: he got in three bites. Before Davis could get the toad away from the dog, the toxin was absorbed through membranes in the dog's mouth.

John Davis and Meredith Nail, next-door neighbors and close friends, with new pets Oliver and Lillian. COURTESY PHOTO

He rushed Finn to the bathtub, tried to flush out the poison, and drove him straight to the emergency vet. That can sometimes help, but sitting around and watching the dog's progress isn't the way to go, noted Dr. Amanda Ziegler, a veterinarian at the Keys Animal Care Center based in Key West (www.keysanimalcarecenter.com) in a past conversation with Florida Weekly.

She once worked as an emergency vet in the west coast region from Cape Coral to Port Charlotte, another cane toad hot spot where the creatures have seemingly prospered, so she's been experienced, too, unfortunately.

"The No. 1 thing you can do is to aggressively rinse the mouth, with a water hose, a kitchen sprayer, the bathtub faucet or shower head," she said. "It can sometimes make it harder for the toxin to be absorbed.

About half survive, and that's a big project. You use IV fluids and sometimes cardiac medications, seizure medications and monitoring."

Bridget Nunez and Jamie Nunez, owners of Antimidators Pest Control and Wildlife Removal, based in Naples, have invented a 5-pound trap for cane toads. COURTESY PHOTO

Taking action

And now, John Davis's life has changed.

Cane toads famously arrived in the 1930s from their native range — they stretch originally from southernmost Texas south into Mexico and the Americas — to stop a beetle destroying sugar cane.

It didn't work, and they almost disappeared. But another release of 100 or so occurred in the 1950s, and that was that.

"Cane toads have proliferated in yards, golf courses, agricultural areas and similar habitat types in Florida. Fortunately, there are few records of cane toads in Florida's native habitats," says Johnson.

They often congregate around fresh water or brackish ponds, canals, ditches or any wet areas where humans have significantly altered the landscapes, suddenly multiplying in huge numbers with the arrival of the wet season.

"The unique thing about them in Florida is they’re associated almost exclusively with humans and human-disturbed habitats," he says. "So from an ecological standpoint, I’m not that concerned about cane toads — there are a number of other more destructive invasive creatures (like the python)."

A female cane toad, left, and a male. STEVE A. JOHNSON, UF/IFAS

Extraordinarily able to adapt, cane toads in Australia are one of the most destructive invasive animals of native flora and fauna on that continent, he notes, spreading through wilderness areas and able to kill anything from small mammals or snakes that take them on, up to crocodiles.

In Florida, however, they have not spread into wilderness lands, instead thriving and expanding into a range stretching roughly from Key West north up the east coast through Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties all the way to Brevard County, and up the west coast from the Naples area roughly to Tampa.

"The big issue with cane toads is socio-economic — the impact on pets and then, by extension, the impact on people. If you have a pet that gets poisoned by one, it can change your life."

Cane toads have large poison glands on their shoulders (indicated with arrow). These glands are somewhat triangular, usually tapering back to a point. They also have a ridge around their eyes and over their nose. STEVE A. JOHNSON, UF/IFAS

The new John Davis

That's what happened to Davis, whose life and lifestyle have now changed.

Usually the most peaceful person on the local planet, come the rainy season, he and Meredith find themselves on night patrols — search and destroy missions of sorts.

"Every night we’ll go out with our headlamps and our gigs — and that was not part of our routine (before Finn died). But when we realized the extent of the problem…"

They learned through trial and error, becoming more efficient, a reality occurring more frequently in recent years across water-proximate urban and suburban neighborhoods on both coasts, as pet lovers act to protect their dogs.

Cats are significantly less inclined to attack cane toads, which don't, therefore, pose the same level of threat to the feline world.

"I don't like the traditional gig too much because once you stick them, they’re stuck on," explains Davis. "The gig has barbs. You have to pull them off. But if you used just the point — like the lance people pick up trash on the roadside with — you can immobilize them easily and then dispose of them."

And not just a few of them.

"On a productive night we’ll go out with a garbage can on wheels because it will get so heavy. We had nights in the last rainy season when we might get 50, but most nights it's a dozen or two.

We’ve grown sort of a dark humor about it. We don't have a point system but we (cheer) when we get an egg layer."

The female, a bit smaller than the male though just as toxic, can produce between 8,000 and 30,000 eggs in long strings twice a year, as long as she has some water — and the rainy season is ideally suited to let that happen, notes Johnson.

The biggest challenge for Davis and Nail has been learning to identify and distinguish cane toads from the natives. Some people, too, kill tadpoles whenever they find them in pools of water, scooping them by the bucket, which means they might be eradicating the natives, not just the cane toads.

"That first summer of 2020 (after Finn died) we were not discriminating," Davis admits. "But then we made sure we could understand the differences between cane toads and others.

"I had the first experience — and it was weird — when I recognized a regular old southern bufo. And we just let him go."

And now, every time he goes canetoad gigging, "I look at size of the glands and whether or not they have the ridge on top of their heads." To start with.

"And if I see a toad on the smaller side, I make very certain what it is," before he takes any action.

The businesses of cane toads

Even municipalities encourage that kind of hunting, in part by assuring citizens that killing cane toads or hiring somebody to do it, either one, is desirable.

The town of Palm Beach, for example, offers effective guidelines here that prove applicable anywhere in Florida: www.townofpalmbeach.com/946/Dealing-with-Cane-Bufo-Toads

They include this advice: "Cane toads are not protected in Florida except by anti cruelty laws and can be removed from private property year-round. The Florida Wildlife Commission (FWC) encourages the extermination of Cane Toads from private properties.

"Captured Cane Toads cannot be relocated and released elsewhere. Hired wildlife trappers are available to assist with the removal of these toads, which can be found by searching online. Homeowners may also remove Cane Toads from their property."

But many prefer to avoid night patrols and gigging themselves, which gives rise to such businesses as the Jupiter-based Toad Busters (www.toadbusters.com), where former science teacher Jeannine Tilford, whose company works across South Florida on both coasts, and adds anti-toad fences to toad removal and other pest services, has geared up for business; or Antimidators Pest Control and Wildlife Removal, where owners Jamie and Bridget Nunez, based in Naples and working up and down the coast, have invented a 5-pound trap, patent pending. They sell it to individuals who order online (www.CaneCatcher.com) and through a distributor, Ensystex, not only across Florida and elsewhere in the U.S., including Louisiana, Texas and a big Hawaii market, but also in the Caribbean and in Australia.

Tilford explains what happens when the dogs see cane toads this way: "They often chase or try to ‘play’ with cane toads; they may lick, nose-nudge or pick up cane toads in their mouth. This exposes your pet to a rapid-acting toxin, which is then absorbed by the membranes in the dog's mouth, causing symptoms ranging in severity from drooling, head-shaking and crying… to loss of coordination, to death."

She can effectively stop that in homes or neighborhoods, she says, and so can Jamie and Bridget Nunez, who work with a distributor, Ensystex, to sell their Cane Catcher trap.

"Any toads in a yard will be attracted to Cane Catcher as a place to hide, and we add attractants — dried pet food or shrimp pellets — and they’re also attracted to the smell of other cane toads," Mrs. Nunez explains.

"Cane toads are kind of territorial, so if you removed them from one section of a yard, they may go to another. Cane catcher is easy to move around, it only weighs about 5 pounds, so you can rotate them, and it's the same thing in communities where the master association can put in Cane Catchers and remove toads from the common areas."

Homeowners can empty traps themselves, and the device has a touchless release, but also a way of letting out any other creature trapped — native toads, for example, or even a rabbit.

"But it has a very low rate of non-targeted capture," she adds.

However it happens, it has to happen for any Florida residents with dogs living in cane toad country, says John Davis.

"If you have a dog, you have to take this seriously. I ignored it, I didn't realize I was playing with fire until it was too late."

But now that's changed. ¦

In the KNOW

About cane toads

» Cane toad fact sheet: www.edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw432Other information: edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw394

» Listen to a cane toad, here:www.wec.ufl.edu/extension/wildlife_ info/frogstoads/wav/giant_ taod.wav.

» Cane Toad video series:Video 1 — Overview and Impacts to Pets:www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg1HUuxM7ZcVideo 2 — How to Identify Cane Toads and other Florida Toads: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMzLes3BaCo&t=529sVideo 3—Capture and Euthanasia of Cane Toads: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JCZlSVbOkWU — Courtesy Steve A. Johnson, Ph.D., professor of Wildlife Ecology & Conservation, University of Florida

This article on cane toads conveniently leaves out one salient point…how they proliferated in Florida.

Cane toads were initially introduced to Florida as a method of biological pest control in the 1930s. The toads were supposed to eat beetles threatening the sugar cane crop, but the introduced population did not survive. In the 1950s, a pet importer released about 100 cane toads (maybe on accident or on purpose, no one is sure) at the Miami airport, and there are other documented incidents of purposeful releases in south Florida. Cane toads have since spread through much of south and central Florida. (UF IFAS Extension)

Once again, "big sugar" strikes!

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