Today started out... not the best. I finally managed to push myself into going for a blood test this morning, per my doctor's instructions — one of those "12-hour fasting beforehand" things, which meant that I had to be reasonably functional before breakfast. I didn't drink much water this morning, having taken the "no food or drink" instruction too literally, so the phlebotomist had some trouble getting blood, and it hurt a lot more than usual. (Note for future: drink lots of water, that's OK; just not anything nutritive.) I don't like needles and such-like at the best of times, which this wasn't. The weather was warm and 100% humid, cloudy with drizzle, not the best biking weather.
But it seems that I arrived at the lab (152 Cleopatra Drive, which used to be where I worked doing R&D for IDS, years&years ago... and it feels very strange to be in the re-purposed building) in the middle of a toad migration. When I locked my bike to the fence out back (since the "Harmony Health Centre" doesn't have a bike rack), I noticed that the lawn and sidewalk were... moving. Hopping. There were hundreds of tiny toads bouncing around, each about 1 cm. long. There's a bit of a culvert behind the building, in some greenspace, so I imagine that they were hatched someplace wet in there, and the warm humid weather triggered them to adventure out into the big wide world. They were very cute.
I went back late this afternoon with a camera, and managed to get some pictures and a couple of videos. Most of my images didn't turn out too well, because it was hard to focus on the little critters and the light was too bright for the image on my camera's screen to be visible. But with enough of a sample size, even hit-and-miss works well enough.
Given the numbers that I saw, and a time span of something like six hours, there must be many thousands of them. I don't know how long they'll be around. Sooner or later, if nothing else, the local predators will notice the buffet.
The coin in the pictures is a dime. That, and the clover in the little video, give some sense of scale.
But it seems that I arrived at the lab (152 Cleopatra Drive, which used to be where I worked doing R&D for IDS, years&years ago... and it feels very strange to be in the re-purposed building) in the middle of a toad migration. When I locked my bike to the fence out back (since the "Harmony Health Centre" doesn't have a bike rack), I noticed that the lawn and sidewalk were... moving. Hopping. There were hundreds of tiny toads bouncing around, each about 1 cm. long. There's a bit of a culvert behind the building, in some greenspace, so I imagine that they were hatched someplace wet in there, and the warm humid weather triggered them to adventure out into the big wide world. They were very cute.
I went back late this afternoon with a camera, and managed to get some pictures and a couple of videos. Most of my images didn't turn out too well, because it was hard to focus on the little critters and the light was too bright for the image on my camera's screen to be visible. But with enough of a sample size, even hit-and-miss works well enough.
Given the numbers that I saw, and a time span of something like six hours, there must be many thousands of them. I don't know how long they'll be around. Sooner or later, if nothing else, the local predators will notice the buffet.
The coin in the pictures is a dime. That, and the clover in the little video, give some sense of scale.
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