[StrawDog]

I saved a toad today! For a horrible moment I thought I'd injured it, but it was just stupidly playing dead. I tried to nudge it to safety, but it curled in on itself, so I had to dig around it and scoop it up (In gloves, as human skin contact can hurt them).

Checking the little beauty over, I could feel it's heart beating and it breathing in my hands, a well as the ill advised escape attempts as I carried it to safety. Felt strange and kind of wonderful, but was worried about holding it too tightly, or it falling out of my unsteady hands.

It only had one back leg! The little stub of its other leg was clearly long healed, and we have a lot of wildlife, pets, and wire fences in the area, so any one one of those could have caused the injury.

I set it down gently away from the work area, and talked to it for a while as I watched it move to see how it was doing. It was walking very slowly, so after leaving it alone for about a minute, decided to take some cover over to allow hiding; little blighter had disappeared, no idea where. Taking that as a good sign that it will be okay.