Friday, May 19, 2006

They could feed the toads asbestos


Australia has a history of good intentions gone bad. They introduced sugar cane which was great until the cane beetle came along, so they brought in the cane toad from South America. Except cane toads cannot reach the cane beetle which lives at the top of the stalk. Luckily for the toads they will happily eat anything else – lizards, snakes, mice, insects, other toads, pet food, pets, whatever they can fit in their mouth. Also they are highly toxic so anything that tries to eat them promptly dies, and they breed like our next subject…
Before the toads came the rabbits. Some English Lord-type missed a bit of rabbit shooting so he imported a few bunnies which did what bunnies are famous for and now the country is overrun. No natural bunny predators, you see, so they brought in foxes to catch the bunnies, which they did…but they also started eating everything else that wasn’t used to having a natural predator. The virus myximatosis, sort of an Ebola for bunnies, was then introduced which so far has had some success. Foxes may be shot on sight for a bounty.

Back in the 30’s or 40’s someone worked out a way to bond concrete and asbestos into sheet material. It’s waterproof, fireproof, termite-proof, light and easy to cut. A perfect building material for this climate…except, well, it’s asbestos. Turns out it kills you. Australia has the world’s richest asbestos deposits, and for about 40 years they built everything from this stuff. Now there’s a whole industry devoted to getting rid of it, billions in legal settlements, and more than a few nagging coughs.
This is why I have a nail gun which came with the warning: Do not press gun against yourself and depress trigger.
You can never be too careful.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shampoo, they still give instructions, maybe it's for those of us, who will be overcome with asbestos, or that annoying nail in the head!

exile said...

don't forget, before all of that there were all these happy people there running around and playing with kangaroos, then one day a boat full of prisoners from europe arrived.

(did you know that kangaroos used to be carnavores? they were like fuzzy velocoraptors)