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DARWIN - A new recruit to a growing army of volunteers, Marilyn Bartels shone her torch into the dripping mangrove swamp in search of her prey.
"I find them repulsive. I caught three on my first outing," she said, probing the darkness for Australia's most reviled alien invader
- the cane toad.
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, was one of 30 volunteers to have gathered 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," said Graeme Sawyer, the co-ordinator of the city's toad-busting efforts.
"If you just let them breed up, then there'll be absolute devastation."
The volunteers, equipped with powerful torches and clear plastic sacks, fanned out into the darkness.
Almost immediately they found a couple of toads lurking in the undergrowth.
The pair was unceremoniously scooped up and dropped in a sack.
The toads are despised not just for their warty skin and gargantuan size - large adults resemble half-deflated footballs and can fill the bottom of a bucket. They are also hated because the poison glands on their backs make them deadly to the crocodiles, monitor lizards, snakes and birds which attempt to eat them.
Sawyer emerged from the darkness clutching a dozen writhing toads in each hand. They would be later knocked out with CO2 gas and dumped in a big freezer.
Once a sufficient stockpile has built up, the toad carcasses are mixed with liquid molasses and fish emulsifier and brewed into a foul-smelling brown liquid nicknamed "toad juice".
A highly effective fertiliser, the first batch is expected to be ready this week and will be distributed to nurseries and hardware stores around Darwin, where it will sell for A$12 a bottle. Preliminary results have shown it is especially good for growing bananas and papayas.
In addition to the weekly toad musters, Darwin locals round up toads in their gardens and kill them, often with the aid of a golf club or cricket bat.
The squeamish can place their captured toads in one of four recently-installed toad "detention centres" - large boxes equipped with food and water to keep the toads alive until they can be humanely slaughtered.
Millions of other toads are also converging on Western Australia, hundreds of kilometres away.
A heroic effort has been launched to keep the toads out of the state, but locals acknowledge they are fighting a losing battle.
The toads have a rampant libido and a female can lay up to 35,000 eggs at a time.
Despite the enormity of the challenge, volunteers like Scott-Virtue are fiercely committed to the cause.
A year ago she and her new husband combined a toad muster with their wedding. In what is probably a world first, they had a simple ceremony in the bush, drank a glass of champagne and then headed off with torches in search of their quarry.
