KENNETH Grahame’s classic Wind in the Willows is one of my all-time favourite stories; whether some feel it is for children doesn’t concern me. It is beautifully written, wonderfully observed, has a great story, goodies and baddies and the marvellous Mr Toad. His family motto is one of my favourite bits – semper bufo – always a toad.
However, on with my tale, if I may. Our local Internet provider is Servidor de Apontadores Portugueses, or SAPO, and many people have an email address along the lines of joebloggs@sapo.pt. I have one, as it came with the bits of kit I got when I had a phone line installed, but I don’t use it. Sapo is also the Portuguese word for toad; I know, the Internet provider is called ‘toad’. It’s like Batelco being called ‘gecko’, I suppose. Anyhow, all this is leading me to an incident which happened just the other day.
You might recall an incident with a vole. It bit my wife’s finger when she tried to rescue it from one of our cats. This resulted in some time in the urgencia department of the local centro de sade. I had hoped that she might have lost this Dolittle-like inner drive to rescue animals, which are in danger’s way, but it seems not. Take a recent example. We were ambling along a wooded track recently, when we spied an amphibian in the middle of the track, with our neighbour’s car coming towards us. She called out and raised her arm in the universally accepted ‘stop’ configuration whilst she bent over the creature. ”I’ll just move this frog before it gets run over”. Meanwhile, our neighbour’s wife had climbed out of their car, all alarmed, calling “nao, nao e muito perigoso”; “no, no, it’s very dangerous”. It turned out that the ‘frog’ was in fact a toad. Not only a toad but also a dangerous one, which can (and, knowing my luck, probably would!) squirt a nasty liquid from glands behind its eyes. Unfortunately, the said toad had been handled (and manhandled off the track) and there was an oily milky residue on my wife’s right hand, seemingly from its skin.
Off home, sharpish! Good old Google much rinsing and dousing later, I read the details. It turns out that all toads can release things called bufotoxins, which can cause anything from prickly eyes to a mild skin rash, but be quite nasty to smaller animals, such as cats and dogs. It seems some experimental types in the 1970s were even deliberately harvesting this toxin from the Colorado River toad, Bufo alvarius, with an eye to take advantage of it psychoactive effects.
There is constant confusion, identification-wise, in our house between frogs and toads. This could clearly lead to difficulties and we now have a simple rule around the place. When an amphibian is seen, best to leave it alone. If, however, the inner urge to help is so powerful that it cannot be denied, then adopt the family motto of Mr Toad: ‘Semper bufo’. Always a toad!
Mike Gaunt is a former headmaster at St Christopher’s School, Bahrain
– mikegaunt@gmail.com
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