EDMONTON SUN (Alberta) 04 April 05 Love Is A Hard Road, Especially For A Toad (Patrycja Romanowska)
One can hardly think about spring without remembering that it is mating season. At the university, girls are beginning to show up in skirts and fresh highlights.
Pedicures and gym-going have begun to reappear on agendas and finally (!) it would seem the males have begun to funnel some of their beer money into badly needed haircuts. The preening has begun and love will soon be in the air.
To fully appreciate this phenomenon, we should first be glad we are not Welsh toads, especially ones in love. As anyone is bound to do in this season of wonderment, toads in Wales blindly follow their hearts all the way to catastrophe.
It's not the usual disharmony of interests that plagues human relationships either.
Nope.
The toads are troubled because of their unwavering dedication to the mating process - or in the immortal words of an obscure waiter, "doing a little drinking, doing a little dancing and making a little looove."
In order to partake in these springtime rites and uphold the toad population of Powys County, these amphibians must undertake a half-kilometre journey from their habitat in a nearby woodland to a lake where they mate.
According to all known rules of love, the path to happiness is beset with obstacles and, alas, the toads are faced with a hard road to cross - literally.
While hopping to find the love of their life or at least of the season, countless toads have been killed by insensitive motorists on a road that bisects their route. Lacking creativity, the poor creatures have yet to build an overpass or think of an alternative path.
Rather, the amorous amphibians simply continue doing what they have done for over a hundred years and blunder along looking for love the only way they know how. Unfortunately, this approach has yielded the exact opposite of their intent, and their population has decreased from 10,000 to 4,000.
As such, conservationists have spent many a night transporting lovestruck toads in buckets from one ditch to another. The toads that make it still have ridiculous odds to beat in order to repopulate mid-Wales with their offspring, and around 96% of their toadlets are eaten by otters.
The happy news is that the progressive Powys County council, undoubtedly made up entirely of romantics, has decided to close the road for a few nights this April and let the toads hop to it.
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