Toad Rescue

Intently going nowhere - the babies hopped more often than the adults

Same colour as the algae and moss they ate.

The basement courtyard at the back of our terrace house is tiled and covered in green and black algae. To clean it we need to hire a water blaster and buy lots of bleach but before that can happen this week we needed to rid the area of a large and uninhibited family of Toads.

A much better habitat for toads across the road.

One of the adult toads reminded me of Wind in the Willows because he would impulsively throw himself into our house whenever the door was left unguarded. I had to rescue him with a plastic bag over hand from getting fluffy in the dinning cave a couple of times. Toads don't jump very much but prefer to crawl, they were constantly trying to climb the stairs out of the basement so I decided that they needed to be rescued and returned back to the riverside willows.

With our frog catching equipment of plastic lidded box, plastic scoop and plastic gloves, M and Willow went hunting. They caught all but one - that we know of! He slunk back into their den in the hollow inside the bottom step - we'll have to get him later, I think bleach would be very bad for the poor fellow.

Cornering the last big one.

Broomstick reinforcement required.

One scoop of Toad

Bridge to Chesterton over the River Cam

Releasing toads on the bank

Bulrushes and lilypads

One crawled off with a baby on it's head

Desrved rest for the Toad Rescuers

The girls freed the Toads on the riverbank and are hopping that the little babies don't get eaten by something.











(I was quite keen for the girls to do a leap frog pose in the common to finish off this blog but they weren't hoppy about the idea - lack of cooperation with my creative genius is always frustrating!)




Reading Now:
The Perfume Collection by Kathleen Tessaro - Harper 2013
Roger the husband is a big toad but a minor character. Grace and Eva are worlds and times apart -1920/30s in New York and France and in 1950s London and Paris with a subtext of perfume manufacture and cons in casinos. Believable characters and a freedom to imagine. See the sordid reality of survival, ambition and trying to do the right thing.
''Do you know what sin means?" 'To do something wrong?' Madame shook her head. "That's one meaning. But there is another, from the Greek, hamartia, which translates, "to miss the mark". That's the meaning I prefer."p147
'Come to your senses' ... 'It means to be reasonable, sensible ... doesn't it?'  'Perhaps it's an invitation ... to return to our senses ... find sustenance in them, inspiration.' p159, Grace and  M.Tissot
"Most customers want to smell like those they aspire to become, not who they were in the past. But perfumers are always attempting to capture scents that remind us of certain places, people, moments. It's the great challenge, to capture not only a true scent but one that recalls entire experience." p191
Eva tried to take the high ground. 'Not everything in this world is black or white Sis."  "Sure it is.... You wanna live in the grey area, you're gonna find out you don't know your ass from your elbow ... and mark my words, grey turns to black pretty damn fast." p213
'Eva found the veil of normalcy the most sinister. Was any wound more painful than the one no one else could see?' p438
Wife to mistress in the French occupation ' I can see why Jacques finds you so fascinating.'  '.. He doesn't. He finds himself fascinating. But only when there is an audience.' ... "I'm nothing more than a shiny little shard of glass, madam.  He looks to see his own face, not mine.' p442