Toad on the road

"Have you lost something?" asked the neat. middle aged woman in Stroud's Lower Street. She'd seen me looking hopefully at her, while also gazing down at the pavement.

20 years ago, it might have been a contact lens I was trying to retrieve.

"Are you any good with toads?" came my reply.

I'd been walking up the street when I saw a black and white cat, wet-looking, with something dangling from its mouth. On seeing me, it dropped its mouthful, which turned out to be a toad. I shooed the cat away, and the toad leaped across the road to the shady part of the street, where it quivered on the doorstep of my former boss. I was hoping she'd be in, because she's an environmentalist, but then I realised her daughter lives there now, and mother has MS, so maybe couldn't run very fast after a toad.

Luckily, the woman in the street knew exactly what to do. She announced that the woman a few doors down, who is an osteopath, has a pond, and that the toad could be repatriated.

While I was waiting for her to negotiate with the pond-owner and find a catching device, I squatted down and took these shots. The toad didn't move. The toad lady came back with a takeaway box, swiftly scooped up the toad and put her hand over the top to stop it leaping out. She then disappeared in the direction of the pond.

"Thank you!" I called after her, while another woman, one young and in shorts, appeared and asked what had happened.

"Thar's digusting!" she exclaimed, horrified by the cat's barbaric but instinctive behaviour.

WE walked 50 yards together, in the direction of the hospital, then she peeled off towards A&E, while I carried on towards maternity, calling another cheerful farewell.

If anyone needed a hospital right now, I suspect it was the toad. The cat, meanwhile, had slunk away, to dry its bedraggled fur under the midday sun.