Cold Blood: Adventures with Reptiles and Amphibians

177 Pages·2015·1.61 MB·English

by  Richard Kerridge

Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
1. Palmate Newt
2. Common Toad
3. Common Frog, Marsh Frog, Edible Frog, Pool Frog, Smooth Newt, Slow
Worm and Great Crested Newt
4. Common Lizard, Slow Worm, Sand Lizard
5. Grass Snake, Smooth Snake, Adder
6. Natterjack Toad, Aesculapian Snake
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
As a boy, Richard Kerridge loved to encounter wild creatures and catch them for
his back-garden zoo. In a country without many large animals, newts caught his
attention first of all, as the nearest he could get to the African wildlife he
watched on television. There were Smooth Newts, mottled like the fighter planes
in the comics he read, and the longed-for Great Crested Newt, with its huge
golden eye.
The gardens of Richard and his reptile-crazed friends filled up with old bath tubs
containing lizards, toads, Marsh Frogs, newts, Grass Snakes and, once, an
Adder. Besides capturing them, he wanted to understand them. What might it be
like to be cold blooded, to sleep through the winter, to shed your skin and taste
wafting chemicals on your tongue? Richard has continued to ask these questions
during a lifetime of fascinated study.
Part natural-history guide to these animals, part passionate nature writing, and
part personal story, Cold Blood is an original and perceptive memoir about our
relationship with nature. Through close observation, it shows how even the
suburbs can seem wild when we get close to these thrilling, weird and uncanny
animals.
About the Author
Richard Kerridge leads the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. His
essays have been published in Granta and Poetry Review, and he has twice won
the BBC Wildlife Award for Nature Writing.
For my mother and father
Cold Blood
Adventures with reptiles and amphibians
Richard Kerridge
Chapter One
Palmate Newt
IT STARTED WITH a golden newt in a black bog. I was ten.
We were walking on Dartmoor, coming down a heathery slope. I can imagine
the kind of day it was. Around us the moor looked beaten up by winter: muddy,
uncommunicative, hunkered down into itself. The heather was faded, the
bracken collapsed and papery, the grass washed-out, the earth wet. Cold breezes
rushed at my face and found a way down the back of my neck. But the sun was
out, and around me creatures were coming to life. Chirruping birdsong sprang up
and was answered. Bumblebees wobbled into flight, to be snatched by the wind.
Spiders scuttled from my feet. A crow called three times, and took off, flapping
hard. The gorse bushes were dense with yellow flowers. Around them, in the
sun, there was a coconutty warmth.
Our path dropped towards a boggy stream and a bridge of flat stones. Pools
glittered there. I ran ahead and lay on the bridge to look into the water. Quietness
settled around me. The April sun warmed my back. The stream was shallow
here, hardly moving over deep-looking mud. On either side, there was bog,
clumps of ribbony brown grass, rising out of black slime. Between them were
dark shallow pools. Patches of oily film gleamed on the surface. Tiny beetles
raced in circles, catching the light.
Beneath me, under the water, the sun picked out a soft brown landscape.
Particles drifted and settled, coating half-buried leaves and sticks, and making
little turrets that trembled. A beetle dashed jerkily about. On the bottom, a long-
legged stick-like creature, some sort of insect larva, seemed to have become
furred with algae. It struggled feebly. Repelled by it, I looked away quickly, and
a movement nearer the middle caught my eye. A small animal, corkscrewing like
an otter, swam to the surface and gulped out a bubble. As soon as it had gulped,
it stuck out all four legs, and let itself drop, paddling once or twice on the way
down. Tail and back feet reached the bottom, sending up a puff of mud. There
the animal rested, half-floating. It was a newt.
But it wasn’t like the pictures I had seen. This newt was smooth and light
brown, about two inches long. I looked down at the head, densely speckled with
gold. It seemed threaded with gold, faded tapestry gold. There was no wavy
crest, but the top of the tail was a fine edge, crinkled in places. I leaned out to get
more of a side view. The newt didn’t move. On its sides it was mottled with
green. The forefeet were long-fingered sensitive hands that stirred in the water
and steadied the body. I couldn’t see the back feet in the mud.
Afraid to take my eyes off the newt, I began to roll up my sleeve, thinking
about reaching down into the water and manoeuvring my hand for a grab. But I
knew the attempt would be almost hopeless. If only I hadn’t left my net in the
car. I was too high up from the water, and there was no other way I could get
near. The bog was obviously too deep for wading. And here came my family,
approaching on the path. They were talking. Frantically, I looked up and
shooshed at them. ‘What is it, Rich?’ my dad called.
‘A newt. There’s a newt here.’
‘Where?’ He came and looked over my shoulder. ‘Stay back,’ he said to the
girls.
It looked tiny now, and far off, a detail on the stream bed.
‘Ah yes. I see it. A little brown newt. Interesting.’
‘Can I see?’ My sisters came onto the bridge, pressing behind us. ‘Where is it?
I can’t see anything.’
‘Follow my finger,’ said Dad.
‘Oh.’ Cathy wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s just brown.’
‘It’s quite sweet,’ said Anne.
‘I suppose.’
‘Dad,’ I said. ‘Can we go back to the car, for the net?’
‘It’s half an hour away.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please.’
‘We’re in the middle of our walk.’
‘Please.’
‘Where is it?’ said my mother. ‘Oh yes. There.’ The girls had moved off the
bridge and were playing some sort of skipping game.
‘Please. I’ll run all the way.’
‘I’ve said no. We’ve got to have our picnic.’
‘You have lunch while I run there and back.’
‘You can’t go on your own.’ He looked uncertain. ‘Come on. It’s just a newt.’
He took a few steps down the path. No one followed.
‘Come on. Now.’
‘Come on, Rich,’ said my mum. ‘It’s better to leave it where it is. If you
caught it, what would you do with it?’
‘I’d take it home and keep it, in a tank, with rocks sticking out of the water,
and plants. It would be my own zoo. Please. I’ve always wanted a zoo.’
Dad had come back to the bridge. ‘I’m telling you, we’re not going back for
the net. Come now.’ He paced up and down.
‘It’s still there,’ said Cathy, on the bridge again.
‘What would you call it?’ said Anne.
‘Please let me go back. I’ll run all the way.’
‘Don’t be silly. You’d get lost. Now that’s enough. We’re walking on. Come
now.’
And this time they followed him, leaving me on the bridge, gazing hopelessly
at the brown creature, at a loss to explain why I wanted it so much. Not more
than two inches long, it was huge in my mind. I wanted it in my own underwater
forest, where it would emerge from a thicket of weed and come up against the
glass, close to my face, in clear watery light.