Lyall Grieve was among the first to see the carnage return to Mark's Dam last December. It was another sunbaked afternoon on the Kimberley plateau in northwestern Australia when the khaki-clad herpetologist stepped out of his Toyota Hi-Lux and onto the red soil. He hiked up a dry, grassy hill to the top of the dam when he spotted the skeleton under a tree. A Merten's water monitor - a meter-long lizard whose nostrils sit atop its head like a crocodile's - was contorted in what Grieve called a "position of pain." Continuing along the edge of the waterhole, he and his companions found three other monitors in various states of decomposition. Then, there was the dead jabiru - a robust stork that breeds in Australia and Asia - along with the empty shell of a turtle and the skull of a raptor. The signs were unmistakable. The cane toad had struck again.
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