The blink of a golden eye

The blink of a golden eye

Froglife and Creeping Toad

Aha! This week, with a toadly creep and occasional froggy hops, Creeping Toad is taking over the Froglife twitter and facebook platforms. The aim is to add a different flavour to the regular Froglife posts and give their regular followers something perhaps a little unexpected to meet. For my regular followers, we hope that connecting to Froglife might bring you into a whole hoppy world of cool damp skin and the dry scales of reptilian cousins….

Because Twitter posts have to be so short and I’m a storyteller with a tendency to ramble, posting is an interesting execrise in shutting up but here I thought I would string those first posts together in their full form as a journey towards hibernation.

The season changes, autumn comes with witner a cloud on a horizon of blowing leaves

The summer is behind her. A spring of swarming waters and wriggling company, a season of damp grass and clambering, the slow learning of dangers and dinners and now a chill on the edge of awareness.

Watch as you garden for the summer’s small survivors: nature takes so many young amphibians, try not to add to the tally.

The darkness calls to froglet, toadlet and matriarch alike, an invitation to sink into ancient dreams, memories drifting down through centuries, through millennia of amphibian feet pressing into soft earth, clasping branches, the chance to step into the long slow sleep that remembers giant dragonflies, tree ferns and the shock  of those first steps onto dry sand

A pile of sticks might be enough. Dead leaves, logs or rocks, a heap and a half, holes and sheter and small tight squeeze points. Our amphibians are heading for hibernation places now. Try taking a look at your garden or the wild place at the end of the street: is there a corner that could be left? A haven for the sleepy? Undisturbed the winter through, a sanctuary to sleep for spring….



Before the winter comes at last, pause. The pond mirrors trees, reflects us, the toad’s eyes mirror other depths, a shimmer of gold, the dream of a damp world, an invitation to see the world at toad height or frog level.

Photographs
All c/o me apart from the final image c/o Kenny Taylor

Links
Froglife is an obvious link but you might also enjoy We Are The Ark with their advice on turning any space you can find into a sanctuary.....