Yes this is very random but my last post got me ruminating on a most peculiar hatred that I have. A hatred for the toad, no not the much maligned cane toad but the more innocuous common toad, Bufo melanisticus (or something along those lines). And why do I hate the common toad? Well in a burst of even more randomness, it has to do with my house. The one that I grew up in that is, not the overpriced, cookie cutter house that I live in now but the wonderfully airy, original, eccentric house I grew up in.

Unfortunately as lovely as the house was and is, with open spaces, an indoor garden with a pond it was not designed to be toad proof. This was especially true for my room on the second floor which only had two true walls. On one side it had big sliding glass windows facing the indoor garden side while the other side was a half wall facing into the house (nobody could look into my room from that side because on the other side of the wall it dropped into the den downstairs, I just thought I’d clarify because I always get that question). Unfortunately this rather eccentric design meant that when the toads that inevitably found their way into the indoor garden decided to mate, the croaking/moaning reverberated up through the den and into my room. It usually sounded like a 20 pound toad was sitting by my ear amorously serenading me.

At the best of times this would have been infuriating. Now the thing is as a youth in my prime I loved to sleep (in fact I still love to sleep, but old age has made me an insomniac) and I found this nightly chorus impossible to handle. The only option I had was crawl out of my bed at ungodly hours in my PJ’s, grab a torch, a bag and crawl around my indoor garden playing Steve Irwin with a bunch of horny toads. What was really annoying was if they spotted me and jumped into the pond, things used to get infinitely complicated and wet at that stage. Several months of this and bulging siri siri bags full of amphibians and I thing I went a bit mental. Multicoloured toads used to dance in front of my eyes at all hours, cavorting and copulating, taunting me with their croaks and hopping just out of reach as I fell face first in the mud.

I must have thrown out at least half a tonne of toads, I threw them out the front door, out into the back garden, off my balcony and on one memorable occasion I even tossed a full, tied bag out by accident onto my neighbour’s roof. The next door maid had awakened to see a plastic bag mysteriously trying to hop in multiple directions in their garden. She of course being quite the sharp pencil assumed I had something to do with it and promptly delivered it to our rather befuddled maid. I finally solved the issue by first putting some ravenous Oscars into the pond and eventually a couple of terrapins (who in fact are still there, increased in size by a hundredfold) and the only toads I found in the pond afterwards were semi-masticated ones.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love amphibians and did in fact spend time one summer attempting to research them up in the mountains (something I’m yet to live down because CP called me at a delicate moment that I had just let a specimen escape from its tank and I had to beg off the phone call to capture it. For some reason all my friends find that hilarious). After all Sri Lanka is the hotspot for amphibians, a little known fact that I am inordinately proud off. But Bufo melanisticus I can do without.