THE GREAT MIGRATION
Twenty-two toads were crossing the road
To get to their ancestral pond;
Along came a berk, driving home from work,
And the twenty-two toads were all gone.
Stunned by the shockwaves of wheels whizzing by,
Squashed by rubber on road;
Stuck in the tread, it’s fair to say all were dead.
And in the pond not one tadpole or toad.
Twenty more toads were crossing the road
And in danger of The Great Beyond.
I don’t like to brag but I had a bucket, not bag,
And took all twenty toads to the pond.
Centuries of lies have given toads a bad press;
No one cares if they’re squished in the end.
Misunderstood, in fact toads are good:
Eating pests, they’re The Gardener’s Friend.
But with housing developments, habitat loss,
Fast motor cars and new roads:
The future’s not bright and it’s really not right
That we’re losing our once common toads.
So please watch for amphibians crossing your roads
(Creatures of which I’ve grown fond),
Help stem this loss; help them to cross
And bring Life back to field, garden and pond.
Toad Patrolling- quite frankly, there are probably better, certainly warmer, ways to spend a night in early spring but I can’t think of them. The silence that falls after the last blackbird has roosted, the sight of an owl, a badger…and then they start to appear: walking with purpose, sitting up on the look out… and then you hear them singing. Frogs croak but toads sing. And that, my friends, you need to experience for yourselves.
If you have a mind to help the UK’s declining amphibian population (toads, frogs, newts), Froglife is a fantastic organisation. They’ll put you in touch with your nearest patrols. Otherwise – I mean also!- please support the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust or -and I mean also!- your local Wildlife Trust
“Bufo Bufo” said the lusting toad
“I want some love action, I must cross the road”
“Bufo Bufo” said the toad, full of lust,
“To get to the love pond, cross the road I must.”
You’ve heard of the Great Migration across the plains of Africa? Well this is a little closer to home but no less magnificent given the scale of the creatures involved. Every year common toads come out from under the rocks, mud and compost heaps where they’ve spent the winter and take the long march to the Ancestral Pond. It might be only up the road or across a couple of fields to you and me but then we’re not 2-3 centimetres high.
Then a motorcar sped down the road
Heart full of desire, out stepped the toad
Out stepped the toad, heart full of desire,
“Glitch” went the toad, between tarmac and tyre.
Another toad crossing said “Oh bother and f**k it”
If only someone had a big plastic bucket.
If someone had a big plastic bucket
To the pond I’d go safely, find another toad and…
Thanks to the less than wintry weather here, the toads started moving very early this spring. January. We saw the first squashed one in January. As these animals are declining in numbers, our crack team of patrollers have been out every night to lift them to safety on the pond side of the road. Some nights are just too cold and only the hardiest, lustiest toads make a move. But other nights when the conditions are just right, warm and damp, we’ve been collecting them by the bucketful.
Ever wondered what 40 toads looks like?
The collective noun is a ‘knot’.
I like that.
The sun is just setting, I am waiting for the last blackbird to shut up and go to sleep and then I’m off again, armed with bucket and torch to zigzag my way up and down the lane so that fewer toads look like this:
And more look like this:
And just so’s you know: they don’t croak – frogs croak.
Toads sing.
Well, if your instincts promised a pond full of passion, wouldn’t you?
