Caught on the hop by nature

THE sun has brought out some strange creatures – bright red, bloated, waddling around on the sand on their shapely cankles.

I speak, of course, of the humble sea toad, a species not native to our waters, but who obviously heard about the looming water shortage and thought he would come closer to shore to laugh at us from his watery home. Well, the joke’s on him, as he ended up being caught off the Kerry coast by the Cú Na Mara trawler on the Porcupine Bank, a place that one would expect to find porcupine fish, but sadly no, just the comedic blob that is the sea toad.

The sea toad is something of a celebrity, having appeared in ‘Blue Planet II’ due to the odd fact that it has legs that it uses to crawl along the seabed. Obviously af ter his 15 minutes of watery fame he now thinks he is able to saunter into Irish waters and possibly even onto land, where he would blend in with various other bright red globulous lifeforms swarming our beaches for the last week. Soon he would be stealing Fungi’s job as Ireland’s ambassador to the oceans, strutting around Dingle demanding free pints (I hear he drinks like a fish), then he’d run in the local elections, and as long as he fixes a few roads using Atlantean sub-contractors, he would be right in.

I say this madness must stop now, and we need to build a sea wall around Irish waters, burn ef figies of Toadfish Rebecchi from ‘Neighbours’ along the coast, and send the message that if we can’t eat you with a side of new potatoes, then you are not welcome in our waters, no matter the weather.