Toad abodes

Val looks at how climate change may affect toad numbers

- Val Bourne

LATELY, I’ve been mentioning my rescue cat Frank, a large and very nervous ginger tomcat we got in mid-July this year. Having kept him in for the recommended four weeks, we let him out and he duly disappeared for three days. We finally lured him back with tinned pilchards in tomato sauce, as recommended by the RSPCA refuge. We also had to leave his dried food outside at night and that attracted at least one hedgehog.

We are still leaving the door open most evenings because we don’t have a cat flap in our old oak door. As a result, the doormat in the porch is getting sodden when it rains heavily. However, this has had an unexpected upside. Toads are coming into the porch and the kitchen, proving that they are still out and about in our Spring Cottage garden. We used to have them in the compost heaps. They sheltered between the vegetation and the tarpaulin, but a hard winter saw them off.