Toad

Studiously avoiding a rather heavy weight of troubles that have landed on my doorstep, I am dwelling on this rather attractive toad that made me yelp as it plopped out of the little juniper tree when I watered it this morning.
I though I had killed the little creature by furiously pelleting the onslaught of Giant Orange Slugs, but it's still there, striped and indignant, gulping in exactly the same way that my old headmistress used to, when she was annoyed beyond endurance by hundreds of nasty teenage girls.
Oh, toad, you are a welcome sight in the yard! The only missing person now is the blackbird, that I have also worried about poisoning, after a deceased slug that was drying on the concrete suddenly disappeared.

Blackbird... where are you?