My sister has been outed for stashing three cane toads in her freezer.
Yep, right in there next to the frozen peas and some bacon is an army of fat toads.
Let me rewind.
My sibling had our three kids for a week during the break so my husband and I could sleep, eat and swim in the Pacific Ocean around a piece of paradise off Cairns called Bedarra Island. This holiday was bliss.
We would phone the kids every day with a cocktail in hand as the sun was setting and ask them what they had done that day with their fabulous aunty, who is a science teacher at Mountain Creek High.
“Today, we bought prawns, not to eat, but to dissect, and we did a worksheet labelling their body parts,” my 12-year-old daughter told me with much excitement.
I nearly choked on my maraschino cherry.
What an unusual activity for them all to do?
But it sounded very interesting, educational and informative.
How different to my days with the kids, where I just let them watch re-runs of dodgy TV shows and eat biscuits.
My sister was always the golden child of the family.
The second day, as the sun set, we rang home again to be told that the kids had dissected a squid.
“Mum, it was amazing to see the squid sack with ink and we cut it up on your good cheese board,” my daughter told me as the latest instalment of the Silence of the Lambs played out, back on the Coast.
I spat my cocktail out.
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On day three, I was wondering what my clan had cut up, and yet I was still gobsmacked to hear the answer. I actually dropped my cocktail.
“Yes, today was the big one, mum. We saw inside a cane toad and even though it was the worst thing I have ever smelt, it was the coolest thing I have ever done,” my girl told me.
The whole thing has become a joke in our family, but it also sparked the question at my radio job of strange stuff people have stashed in their freezers.
One man rang to say he knows a woman who has a dead koala in her freezer.
Creepy. And I am pretty sure highly illegal.
Other strange items locals confessed to included cows’ ears, pigs’ intestines, a Russian deep-sea diving suit, and pineapple lumps.
So, if you are looking for something outside the box and have a strong stomach for gore, perhaps my big sister has some spare spaces in her strange anatomy classes for kids.
Sami Muirhead is a radio announcer, blogger and commentator. For more from Sami, tune into Mix FM.
