Stand back, it's Frog Rescue!

One of the things I inherited in my new garden is a swimming pool.

"Wow! That's so posh," people say to me. But then they see it!

It was apparently built in the 1970s, but the problem was that Frogs (and other things) fell into the chlorinated water and died.

So they stopped using it and, by the time I bought it, it was a green stinking soup where the only option was to cover my nose and pump it out.

The plan is to turn it into a wildlife pond, but my first problem is that Frogs and spawn are in the (now) unchlorinated puddle at the bottom. So it was time to undertake a Frog Rescue before the puddle dries up.

Here is our intrepid hero at work (that's me!). (You can see in the corner some of the planks and other structures I'm using in the short-term to help any wildlife that falls in to get out, but I check it daily just in case).

Up came nine Frogs and giant blobs of spawn, transferred into the small ponds elsewhere in the garden.

But this is where the story turns rather sad, for one of the Frogs turned out to be affected by some kind of disease. Terribly emaciated, I was astonished it was still alive.

I am not expert enough to diagnose whether it is affected by one of these terrible Ranavirus-type diseases, thought to have been imported from abroad in the pet trade, that have been ravaging our Frogs and Toads.

But it does lead onto a serious message, which is that I would normally not advocate the moving of amphibians and spawn. It is so tempting to raid an existing pond to stock a new one, but the basic advice is to let nature come under its own steam rather than risk moving these diseases around.

Unless, of course, you have an emergency like mine and have to resort to orange buckets and, (drumroll), Frog Rescue.