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Published by Thelma Blandon, 2019-12-04 14:14:24

Billie the beetle

Billie the beetle

Billie the Beetle and His Adventures in the Jungle

Ayesha Rana

Once upon a time a beetle named Billie lived with her family and friends in sugarcane fields in Queensland, Australia. Billie
loved the sugarcane fields because sugarcane is sweet, and she had many friends there. Billie's best friend was Sally, a snail
whom she used to hang out with in sugarcane fields, but each day sugarcane plants were getting less and less.

Then, one day a man, who was wearing a white coat, released mysterious animals which were yellowish, olive-brown or
reddish-brown, and their bellies were pale with dark spots; most of them were 10-15 cm long. They sit upright and moved in
short rapid hops.

The mysterious creatures turned out to be cane toads, who started to attack insects and other beetles, so billie and Sally got
scared and hid behind a rock where no one could see them. Billie and Sally saw that cane toads were poisonous as a snake ate a
cane toad and died afterwards.

The cane toads were eating whatever they could swallow, but mostly they eat small insects and animals like mice, beetles,
grasshoppers, weevils and snails. Then billie saw a toad which ate her mom and dad and her siblings, but she was safe as she was
hiding with her friends, so they decided that they keep hiding until they would go away.

Billie’s best friend sally told her that cane toads like to eat weevil , grasshoppers and snail but the eat
beetle only when they can’t find the other small insects and cane toads mostly eats those insects which
eats plants as sally was a snail she knew about this and was more careful.

Billie noticed that sugarcane fields started slowly to get more healthy and that the production increased as toads were there and
ate any small insect which came there, so small insects stop going there but big animals like snakes and dogs still went there
which caused the snakes population to decrease like this one dog, Danny who was friends with Billie who ate a cane toad in
sugarcane fields while they hanging out and died. Billie was sad as toads were changing everything but slowly beetles population
started to increase as they didnt go to the fields.

Then, one day she was near sugarcane fields, a toad came in front of her and although it didn’t try to kill her, Billie was very
scared. The toad introduced himself; his name was Fernand, and he told her not to be scared so she became less scared, and they
started to talk about themselves and became friends.

Billie got to know that Fernand lived in rainforests with other cane toads because it's moist and warm which is the most
suitable ecosystem for the cane toads and as Some parts of Australia is also a rainforest that's why it was really easy for the cane
toads to get adapted to the environment of australia and their population was increasing very quickly.

Billie noticed that as the population of cane toads were increasing, plants were dying as all the insects were eating plants, so
plants population decreased, but Billie did make many new friends as the population of small insects increased as big animals
died because of cane toads who were poisoning them.
This story helps us understand that we should be respectful to ourselves and to others like Billie was as she became friends with
a cane toad. She decided to give the cane toad an opportunity, even though its species seemed to have been harmful to her
environment.

Bibliography

Why cane toads were introduced to australia? Retrieved by :
https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/animals/frogs/cane-toad/ ,
https://www.pestsmart.org.au/pestsmart-case-study-introduction-of-the-cane-toad-to-australia/
What were the effects of cane toads on ecosystem? Retrieved by :
https://www.ecolsoc.org.au/hot-topics/ecological-impacts-invasive-cane-toads


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