A tale of two toads (and a dragon)

It's been a critter themed long weekend here, beginning with this friendly toad hanging out by the garage.

Not the kind of toad that is suitable for a toad-in-the-hole, which Ruby was dutifully keeping an eye on incase it hopped off my plate into her mouth ...


After the sad loss of two of our chickens to wanderlust, we finally constructed a chicken run outside of the chicken shed, primarily out of the slats from a long-deceased single bed frame (and of course 10 meters of chicken wire). Unsurprisingly, Ruby has already dug her way in ... scattering Nancy under the shed (yet to emerge ... what noise do I have to make to attract a frightened chicken?) ... and so revisions and additions have been made, and hopefully our run is now boxer dog proof!

With the wind blowing a little colder here each day, we also fitted a new cat flap over the hole in the back door, which Ophelia has mastered with incredible speed and bravery - I am so proud!

I've been training Ruby to come back to a whistle. She does turn up after a little while to receive her piece of cheese, but not before Ophelia has run to greet me and jumped up for a cuddle. Even if the cat is quite some distance away, she never fails to attend to the whistle ... I knew siamese cats were trainable and attributed dog-like traits, but this is surely beyond normal feline behaviour?

Much more cat like was her attraction to this huge (for Surrey) and skittish creature - surely more dragon than fly?




I'm not generally one to be intimidated by creatures with so much less spine than myself ... but this thing eventually got the better of me, and I have to admit that we stereotypically called on the services of the nearest being possessing a Y-chromosome. Many thanks to our ginger tom-cat Frank for coming to our rescue!