Toad Delight

by Morris Gleitzman

  ‘Goliath,’ he croaked. ‘You have to let Penny go. Let her go, Goliath. There’ll be other backpacks. You’ll love again, I promise.’

  Too late.

  The adult male swung the cricket bat and Limpy watched in horror as it smacked into Goliath’s tummy and the wailing Goliath hurtled high into the air and off into the far distance.

  Limpy ducked behind a bush.

  This was partly to give the humans a chance to inspect Penny, then return her to the tearful girl, then all stamp away still muttering. But it was also to wait till his tummy stopped having the cramp spasms he got sometimes when he feared Goliath or Charm might be dead.

  As soon as the spasms ended, Limpy and Charm went to find Goliath.

  He was a long way away, but they found him easily from his sobs and howls in the distance.

  ‘Penny,’ he was wailing. ‘Come back to me.’

  ‘Is anything broken?’ Limpy anxiously asked Goliath when they got there.

  ‘Just his heart,’ said Charm sadly.

  They helped Goliath down from the prickle bush he’d landed in. Goliath had lots of prickles sticking out of his big warts, but he didn’t seem to be feeling any of them.

  ‘Penny,’ he moaned. ‘I want Penny.’

  Charm hugged him between the prickles, then started carefully removing them one by one.

  ‘You’ll get over her,’ she said. ‘I promise you will. You’ll meet a lovely esky and forget all about her.’

  ‘I won’t,’ wailed Goliath. ‘I want Penny. She’s mine.’

  Limpy’s warts drooped for Goliath.

  They drooped for another reason as well. Limpy couldn’t stop thinking about the things the angry female human had been yelling.

  He hadn’t understood her words, but her body language had said it all.

  Goliath, she’d been saying, was a mean nasty greedy selfish monster.

  And she had the movie on her phone to prove it. A movie that soon humans everywhere would be sharing. Limpy had seen in campgrounds how much humans liked looking at things on their phones, specially when they were queueing for a shower or cooking chops.

  This was everything Limpy had feared.

  If this was how humans felt, no wonder they didn’t mind wearing out their tyres and putting stress on their cricket bats to get rid of cane toads.

  Limpy couldn’t stay silent any longer.

  He had to tell somebody.

  Ancient Abigail didn’t look pleased to see Limpy.

  ‘What do you want?’ she demanded through a mouthful of lizard burger.

  ‘Um,’ said Limpy nervously. ‘I need to ask you something. On account of you being the oldest and wisest toad in the swamp.’

  He decided not to say, ‘and because you get this big mud cave to live in and all the food you can eat in return for sharing your wisdom.’ That might have sounded rude, and Limpy had heard that Ancient Abigail could be a bit bad-tempered.

  Ancient Abigail grunted and slid another lizard burger into her mouth.

  ‘Go on then,’ she said, spraying Limpy with lizardy crumbs.

  Limpy glanced around the mud cave while he gathered his thoughts.

  Ancient Abigail’s place was huge.

  Which it needed to be, because so was Ancient Abigail. Limpy had heard that each day she ate more than her own body weight in lizard burgers.

  ‘Well,’ said Limpy. ‘Um . . .’

  Suddenly he wasn’t sure how to say it.

  ‘Spit it out,’ said Ancient Abigail, spitting out a fair bit herself.

  Limpy decided he just had to blurt it out.

  ‘Would you say,’ he said, ‘in your opinion, that we cane toads are –’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Ancient Abigail, pointing. ‘Pass me that over there. I always get nervous when a visitor’s here and there’s only one left.’

  Limpy handed her the last lizard burger, which she ate.

  ‘Now, back to your question,’ she said. ‘Would I say that we cane toads are what?’

  Limpy took a deep breath through his skin pores.

  ‘Greedy and selfish,’ he said.

  Ancient Abigail looked at him for a long time, frowning. Limpy started to understand how a lizard burger might feel.

  ‘How do you mean?’ grunted Ancient Abigail. ‘Greedy and selfish?’

  Limpy also knew how a bog weevil in Goliath’s tummy probably felt. With no choice but to keep going, trying not to think about what might happen at the other end.

  ‘Well,’ said Limpy, ‘we’re always hearing how things are getting a bit scarce, right? Water, edible species, the good weather we used to have, stuff like that. And not just here, everywhere. Migrating birds are always going on about it. I’m wondering if the reason humans hate us cane toads is because we’re always gobbling up more than we need.’

  There was a long silence.

  Limpy held his breath, fearing that Ancient Abigail was getting angry.

  He hoped desperately she wasn’t taking this personally. He hoped she understood that he was talking about all cane toads.

  All except her.

  Oh no, he thought. I should have said that.

  ‘Hmmmm,’ said Ancient Abigail. ‘Gobbling up more than we need. I think you might be right.’

  Limpy stared at her, surprised and relieved. It was the first time he’d ever heard anybody admit that something was true when they probably didn’t want it to be.

  This must be what wisdom is, thought Limpy. Everyone said Ancient Abigail had huge amounts of wisdom as well as huge amounts of loose skin behind her knees, and they were right.

  ‘Take a look at this,’ said Ancient Abigail.

  Limpy was relieved she wasn’t talking about her knees.

  She was holding out a flat oblong thing with glass on one side.

  ‘It’s a tablet,’ said Ancient Abigail.

  Limpy was puzzled. It didn’t look like any tablet he’d ever seen. He’d only ever seen one, a small pill Goliath had found in the picnic ground, which when Goliath ate it made him poo even more than usual, which was a lot.

  ‘Humans use these to see things,’ said Ancient Abigail, tapping the oblong tablet. ‘They prefer it to looking around.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’ asked Limpy.

  ‘Goliath found it in a human tent,’ said Ancient Abigail. ‘He thought it was something to eat.’

  Limpy noticed that one corner did look a bit chewed.

  Ancient Abigail pressed something on the edge of the tablet and suddenly the glass side came to life.

  Limpy took a step back.

  Then he realised he’d seen something like this before, in a human campervan. The tablet was like a big phone. Being bigger probably made it break less easily when the humans gawking at it walked into trees.

  ‘Have to be quick,’ said Ancient Abigail. ‘Not much battery left.’

  She signalled for Limpy to look more closely at the coloured images moving on the tablet.

  He did.

  And blinked with shock.

  On the screen were cane toads, lots of different ones in lots of different places. But they all had one thing in common.

  They were stuffing things into their mouths, often several at a time.

  Groceries, shoes, small pets, car parts, garden ornaments, lots of the produce of vegetable farms, and quite a few barbeque heat beads. And huge numbers of other bush creatures, including dead kangaroos on the highway even though they could only get one foot in.

  ‘Is this what you mean?’ asked Ancient Abigail.

  Limpy nodded.

  After a while the screen showed a map. Limpy knew it was a map of Australia because he’d seen it on campervan stickers and drivers’ tattoos.

  The top half of the map was covered with little cane toad figures moving down towards the bottom of the map like an advancing army. Suddenly diagonal red crosses appeared, slashing across the cane toads.

  Limpy knew what diagonal red crosses meant. He’d seen plenty of them on sig
ns in caravan parks.

  Forbidden.

  Not Wanted.

  Get Rid Of.

  Stamp Out.

  The tablet screen went blank.

  ‘Battery’s conked,’ said Ancient Abigail.

  Limpy was dizzy with alarm. It was worse than his worst nightmares, even the ones he’d had after Goliath had persuaded him to try some barbeque heat beads.

  ‘We have to warn the others,’ Limpy croaked to Ancient Abigail. ‘Tell them that if we don’t stop being greedy with food and other creatures and barbeque accessories, the humans will kill us all.’

  Ancient Abigail thought about this.

  ‘You’re probably right, young Limpy,’ she said. ‘But here’s the rub. In my long experience, if you tell other folk things they don’t want to hear, maybe even things they find a bit insulting and hurtful, they can be very stingy with, oh, I don’t know, lizard burgers for example.’

  Limpy stared at Ancient Abigail, who was picking lizard crumbs off her front and didn’t seem to want to look him in the eye.

  ‘But somebody’s got to tell them,’ said Limpy. ‘Somebody’s got to.’

  Suddenly Ancient Abigail was looking at him.

  Right at him.

  From outside the mud cave came the sound of heavy hopping and a lot of croaking.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ancient Abigail to Limpy. ‘Bit busy right now.’

  She turned to the entrance and gave a yell.

  ‘In here, boys.’

  Several of Limpy’s second and third cousins came in, dragging big swamp leaves piled with burgers.

  Ancient Abigail threw herself into organising where they should be stacked. She seemed to have forgotten Limpy was even there.

  But as Limpy hopped outside, his heart heavy and his thoughts full of what he had to do, Ancient Abigail’s voice floated out after him.

  ‘Good luck, young fella. Be brave, be strong.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Limpy.

  ‘And eat more,’ called Ancient Abigail. ‘You need fattening up.’

  ‘Greedy?’

  Mum looked at Limpy, shocked and hurt.

  Limpy sighed.

  This was what he’d feared.

  ‘Not just you,’ he said hastily. ‘All of us. Cane toads everywhere.’

  This didn’t seem to make Mum feel any better. And on the big leaf where she was preparing dinner, several of the termites and slugs and weevils waiting to be mixed up together and marinated in their own juices looked shocked too.

  ‘That’s a bit rough,’ said a bog weevil. ‘You cane toads have got healthy appetites, sure, that’s why we’re here today, but greedy, no way.’

  ‘If my son spoke to me like that,’ said a termite, ‘I’d give him a good talking to. Well, I would if you hadn’t eaten him last week.’

  Limpy shivered, as if a cold breeze had just touched his warts.

  For a moment he assumed it was because of the way Mum and Dad and Charm and quite a lot of their dinner were looking at him. But then his crook leg started to twitch and Limpy knew from experience what that meant.

  A storm was coming.

  He ignored it. He had a more important storm to deal with, the one that was rumbling in his family.

  Dad was frowning so hard that some of his warts had turned inside out.

  ‘Limpy,’ he said. ‘Mum and I didn’t bring you up to carry on with this sort of caper. Hurting the feelings of family members with name-calling.’

  Limpy sighed again.

  ‘I’m just trying to help,’ he said. ‘I’m just saying that the more we understand why humans hate us, the better we can protect ourselves. Humans reckon we’re greedy and I can see why. Look at all this dinner, just for the five of us.’

  Limpy pointed to the several hundred insects waiting patiently in line.

  ‘Oh, very nice,’ said a dung beetle. ‘Very hurtful, when we’ve all made the effort to be here.’

  The other insects agreed.

  ‘We’ve always eaten this much,’ said Mum, even more hurt. ‘It’s normal. Limpy, I thought you appreciated the effort I put into making you nice meals.’

  ‘The effort we all put in,’ said Dad.

  ‘Here, here,’ said the insects.

  ‘Limpy,’ said Charm. ‘I think you’d better leave this conversation for another time.’

  Limpy felt like his warts were going to pop with frustration.

  ‘All I’m suggesting,’ he wanted to yell, ‘is that we try to eat a little less. Show humans we can be a bit more generous and a bit more sharing. I’m not saying we have to starve ourselves to death. It’s not the end of the world.’

  Before Limpy could say any of those things, a throat-sac-wobbling crack shook the leaves around them and the air shuddered with a roll of thunder so loud it did sound like the world was ending.

  ‘Storm,’ yelled Limpy. ‘Everyone under cover.’

  They all hurried under the thick leaves of the storm shelter, insects included.

  ‘Where’s Goliath?’ said Limpy.

  He was relieved to see that Goliath was already in there, slumped in a corner next to a large pile of grasshopper husks and snail shells.

  ‘Can you please keep the noise down,’ said Goliath. ‘I’m nursing a broken heart here.’

  His big body drooped some more and didn’t stop drooping even when he put a handful of grasshoppers and snails into his mouth.

  Limpy was shocked. Usually, no matter how unhappy Goliath was feeling, a big mouthful of food was the one sure way to perk him up.

  Poor bloke, thought Limpy sadly, he must really be suffering.

  ‘If you truly want to help this family,’ said Dad to Limpy, ‘you can start by finding Goliath a new girlfriend.’

  ‘Penny,’ whimpered Goliath.

  ‘And,’ said Charm, ‘perhaps you can give us a bit more warning next time a storm comes. Is your leg having a day off?’

  ‘Now come on,’ said Mum. ‘Don’t all gang up on Limpy. Storm warnings shouldn’t be his responsibility. We’ve got storm beetles for that.’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Limpy quietly. ‘We’ve eaten them all.’

  Mum and Dad and Charm all glared at him and Limpy could see Charm was right, this conversation should be left for another day.

  ‘For your information,’ said Charm, ‘we haven’t eaten them all. There are two over there.’

  Limpy looked to where she was pointing.

  She was right.

  Two trembling storm beetles were sitting on Goliath’s knee.

  ‘Sorry,’ said one of storm beetles. ‘We should have warned you. But we’re exhausted. There’s only two of us left in the whole district. We’ve got to do all the storm warnings, plus all the breeding.’

  Before Limpy could suggest to them that perhaps the knee of a love-sick insect gobbler wasn’t the best place to start a family, more thunder exploded and violent gusts of wind shook the leaves above them.

  And another sound started.

  A ripping, tearing, shredding sound.

  Limpy peered out of the shelter.

  And blinked.

  Crashing down from the sky was very heavy rain, except it wasn’t drops of water, it was small jagged lumps of what looked like glass.

  Limpy had never seen anything like it.

  For a moment he wondered if a few hundred cars on the highway had smashed into each other in the storm and these were bits of their windscreens raining down.

  It didn’t seem likely. And the wind was suddenly very cold.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Mum.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Dad. ‘Let’s ask the storm beetles.’

  They all turned to Goliath. His knee was bare. Goliath was licking his lips. He looked at them guiltily.

  ‘Oops,’ he said.

  Limpy forced himself not to get cross with a heart-broken cousin.

  He turned back to the crashing lumps of rain, which were being flung around the swamp now by the wind.

  ‘I thi
nk I know what that is,’ said Charm. ‘It’s what a seagull from down south told me about once. Those are lumps of ice. It’s called hail.’

  Limpy was stunned.

  ‘Ice?’ he croaked.

  Mum and Dad looked stunned too.

  ‘This is the tropics,’ said Dad. ‘The only ice we’re meant to have up here is from human ice-cream storage facilities.’

  The ripping, tearing, shredding sounds were continuing.

  Limpy looked nervously at the roof.

  It seemed OK. He was glad that when they’d decided to have a storm shelter on account of all the storms lately, they’d chosen some of the thickest and strongest leaves in the swamp and riveted them together with hookworms.

  ‘Hear all that ripping, tearing and shredding?’ said Goliath through a mouthful of the family’s dinner. ‘That’s what’s happened to my heart.’

  Charm went over and gave him a hug.

  Mum and Dad did too.

  Limpy decided to hug Goliath later. He stayed staring at the hail. He was having a very troubling thought.

  What if it wasn’t only humans who’d had a gutful of greedy cane toads?

  What if the weather had as well?

  When the storm was over, Limpy went to check on the rellies. Not the ones on the highway, the ones in his room.

  Then he inspected the stack of flat uncles, then he checked the flat aunty stack, then the flat cousin stack.

  Phew, what a relief. No hail damage or wind damage to any of them, thanks to the thick leafy hookworm-reinforced ceiling.

  Limpy was glad. Poor rellies, they’d suffered enough already, squashed flat on the highway and sunbaked into hard discs with only their surprised faces to remind anyone who they were.

  ‘Limpy.’

  He jumped.

  Sometimes, lying in bed surrounded by the stacks of rellies, Limpy imagined just before he went to sleep that the rellies were talking to him.

  Thanking him for stacking them so neatly. Begging him to find a way for cane toads to live peacefully with humans before Mum and Dad had to build an extension onto his room for more stacks.

  Limpy turned.

  The rellies weren’t speaking to him now.

  It was Mum, with Dad next to her.