The only way I know of to get rid of toads is to clear the children out of the room and strike them (the toads) with hot pokers.

You should take care of your yard, because it tells people a lot about you. For example, if you have a lot of yard statues, it tells people you’re a jerk.

The most important part of your yard is the lawn. In America, having a nice lawn is considered a major cultural achievement, like owning a hardcover book or watching “Meet the Press.” Americans would rather live next to a pervert heroin addict Communist pornographer than a person with an unkempt lawn.

The first step toward a nice lawn is to determine the chemical content of your soil. To do this, dig up a handful of soil and examine it carefully under a harsh light: It should be composed of dirt, unless you live in New England, in which case it will be composed of enormous rocks; if you live in the South, your soil may also contain used tires.

Once you’ve determined the chemical content, you should add some random chemicals to your soil. Many lawn experts recommend that you add nitrogen, which is stupid, because nitrogen is a gas, and there is no way in the world you can add it to your lawn. It will simply drift off into the atmosphere the instant you open the bag. So your best bet is to just go up to the medicine cabinet and root around for some chemicals in the form of old prescription pills and dump them on your lawn.

I use old tranquilizers on my lawn, and not only have I saved a lot of money on chemicals, but I’ve also found that I have an extremely relaxed lawn. Take the earthworms. Instead of sliming around underground in a nervous, twitching manner, as so many worms do, my worms loll about on the lawn surface, laughing the laugh of the truly carefree. Oh, sure, sometimes they get underfoot, but it’s a lot better than the time I gave them amphetamines and they were up all night shrieking about how nobody loved them.

Dandelions are easy to get rid of: You just jab them with red-hot knitting needles. Some people even eat them in soups and salads. Most of these people die within hours.

Crabgrass, the squat, ugly, tattooed plant that makes up 85 percent of your lawn, is tougher. Crabgrass can grow on bowling balls in airless rooms, and there is no known way to kill it that does not involve nuclear weapons. Oh, I know you’ve seen advertisements for lawn products that are supposed to kill crabgrass, but don’t believe them. Crabgrass thrives on these products. In fact, my crabgrass often tries to dupe me into buying them. When I’m getting into my car, my crabgrass will yell, in mock horror, “Oh, please, don’t go to the garden supply store and buy one of those deadly anticrabgrass lawn products!”

The only way to deal with crabgrass is to sneak up on it in the dead of night, pound it repeatedly with a ball-peen hammer, and flee on foot before it can snare you by the ankles. You won’t kill the crabgrass, of course, but it may become irritated enough to move to a neighbor’s lawn.

Your first job is to prepare the soil. The best tool for this is your neighbor’s motorized garden tiller. If your neighbor does not own a garden tiller, suggest that he buy one. Then select a section of your lawn or driveway that looks as though it might have soil underneath it, and rip it up with the tiller. As the sharp steel blades slice violently into the ground, you may be able to hear the tiny screams of the various worms and furry little woodland creatures hibernating in the soil. Pay no attention.

Now you should buy some vegetable seeds, which are sold in little packets with attractive photographs on the covers to illustrate what your vegetables will not look like. The backs of the packets will give you specific planting instructions, depending on what area of the country you live in. For example, if you live in Florida, you should plant your seeds in the ground, whereas if you live in Maine, you should plant your seeds in Florida.

Once you have planted your garden, you have to deal with insects. The trick is to prevent them from eating all the seeds within minutes after you plant them, so they’ll have something to eat later on. The best way to do this is to scatter sandwiches and pastries around the garden to distract the insects until the seeds have had a chance to form vegetables.

Larger animals, such as rabbits and elk, are tougher to keep away. You may have to fire a few bazooka rounds over their heads. This will also keep your neighbor at bay if he’s trying to get his motorized garden tiller back.

Your only remaining task is to rotate your crops. About every two weeks, dig everything up and put it where something else was. This may seem like a lot of work, but your major farmers do it all the time. For that matter, some of your major farmers manage to get out of growing crops altogether, and the government pays them for this valuable service. You might want to try setting up the same arrangement. Instead of starting a vegetable garden, write the government a letter like this:

“Dear Sirs: I didn’t grow anything this year. Please send me $126,000.”

I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know how the government responds, especially if it sends you money. If, on the other hand, armed federal agents arrive at your door, I’d prefer that you didn’t mention my name.

Tomatoes are the most popular garden vegetables, because you can do so much with them. For example, you can eat them. The trick to growing tomatoes successfully is to stagger the planting. Plant one-fourth of your tomatoes, then wait two weeks and plant another fourth, and so on, until you have planted them all. This insures that all your tomatoes will ripen within a five-minute period late in August, usually when you are away on vacation, so you will return home to find 700 pounds of tomatoes rotting on the ground in a sodden, insect-covered mass.

The zucchini is a dense, flavorless vegetable that is useful primarily as ballast. You can also eat zucchini, but only in very small quantities: One zucchini is enough to satisfy the zucchini needs of a family of six for a year. The trouble is, you cannot grow just one zucchini. Minutes after you plant a single seed, hundreds of zucchinis will barge out of the ground and sprawl around the garden, menacing the other vegetables. At night, you will be able to hear the ground quake as more and more zucchinis erupt. To prevent your property from becoming one big, pulsating zucchini herd, you will be forced to sneak over to your neighbors’ houses in the dead of night and hurl excess zucchinis onto their lawns.