Oh yeah “Ooh, aah”, that’s how it always starts. But then there’s running and screaming.
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Ian Malcolm
The Lost World: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
I have read a lot of Michael Crichton novels. One of the hallmarks of science fiction is even with the best of planning and intentions the “science experiment” always goes “awry”. And art imitates life. Science does not always plan for “Unintended Consequences”. However, the insurance industry does when setting its rates. And that is a bit ironic.
Borrowing a quote from the late Hunter S. Thompson who stated, “I have never believed much in luck, and my sense of humor has always walked on the dark side.”
I watched a documentary film that combines these two tangents. This is a movie to put in your Netflix queue.
Cane Toads: The Conquest is an “unintentionally funny and off-beat” documentary that turns out to be a very effective film.
In 1935, the cane beetle was destroying the sugar cane crop of Australia. The cane toad which did a good job of eating the grubs infesting the sugar fields of Puerto Rico were brought in. That was the “expert plan”. Well, there turned out to be a big difference between a grub and a beetle. The toads were not about “to jump for the Men Down Under”. They then did what many of the “unproductive” members of a species decide to do. They then went about reproducing in mass and wreaking havoc on the environment.
This movie is the story of the “bizarre” methods that people in Australia have employed in order to control the cane toad population. It is a population that is now estimated to be over a billion in numbers. So the strategy has been “flawed” at best. It shows a lot of the “fears” of mankind in regards to controlling nature. “The hubris” at work with the so called “experts” trying to take that control.
Plus, watch out for the poor dog that develops a strange “affection” for the toads.
Sorry, but he made me laugh at his “dilemma”.
Graeme Sawyer- The Lord Mayor, The City of Darwin says “Yeah, it was a bit of ‘Aw, shit’ moment to think it was there. It was a bit like an army on the march…there was just wave after wave of them.”
Think of the cane toads as mini Godzillas going wild.
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