The Mastodon API is really fun to play with. You should check out the documentation if you haven't already.
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/statuses
You can start sending curl requests now. You don't even need OAuth material or anything. You can just curl the API directly as most of the endpoints are public.
Here is a fun way to have pulled up just to see whats happening on our server. You can grab a list of all of the server toots as they come through in real time 🎉