Siegie, my husband, was reading the newspaper one evening recently. “That’s what it was,” he burst out. “A leopard toad.”
Of course, I should have recognised that he was continuing the conversation we’d had at 6.30 that morning when I was half asleep. But I was a bit slow on the uptake so he read out the relevant section of the report about the snoring sound these endangered creatures make during their 10-day courtship, a sound that he swore he’d heard. To make sure, he turned to the Internet and found a “soundbite” that he downloaded for me to hear.
A couple of hours later, he dragged me outside onto the patio. “Listen,” he said. And there it was, a low rasping noise that sounded just like what we’d listened to on the computer earlier.
We headed out onto the lawn to try to pinpoint where it was coming from. Naturally, it stopped and we stood like frozen statues in the chill night air waiting for it to start again. The long minutes dragged on, then a short rasp and we were able to home in on the koi pond.
Silence. Finally, Siegie switched on the portable spotlight and shone it all around the edge of the pond, but there was nothing to see. We gave up and headed indoors.
As soon as we got inside, of course, it started up again. We went out and walked all around the pond shining the light into every nook and cranny. The toad was clearly somewhere in the tangle of wild rosemary but he remained hidden.
We went to sleep that night – and the next few nights – to the sound of Leopold serenading his prospective mate. He certainly got full points for trying, and hopefully he succeeded. A host of little leopard toadlets in our koi pond would, no doubt, be welcomed by the koi. It might stop them from eating their own young for a change.
For us, it was a thrill to hear Leopold even if we didn’t see him. You might say we had a close encounter of the toad kind.
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