Lord of the Compost

This uncommonly handsome fellow lives in a tennis-ball-size hollow in my compost heap. If you flip back the covers he is often seen squatting there in fatsome splendour like a mini Jabba the Hut. He doesn't worry about being spotted. He just waits for us to go away again. Scowling.

He's a Common Toad Bufo bufo and can live 10-12 years in the wild.

At the moment, however, he's living in close proximity with a community of pretty little chestnut bank voles. I rather suspect he eats the smallest babies - but there seem to be plenty to spare. If you catch him walking, he balances a huge swollen body on spindly legs - and he tends to walk on tiptoe, very much like Eric Cartman when he is trying to be inconspicuous.

This morning he had moved out of his horrid hole and was sitting decoratively on the old rhubarb leaves, his warts aglitter

`The world has held great Heroes,
As history-books have showed;
But never a name to go down to fame
Compared with that of Toad!

`The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them know one half as much
As intelligent Mr. Toad!

`The Queen and her Ladies-in-waiting
Sat at the window and sewed.
She cried, "Look! who's that HANDSOME man?"
They answered, "Mr. Toad."
Wind in the Willows