Just call me David Attenborough

After a weekend of wifi outages I hope I’m back…

I’m particularly pleased to be bringing you this report. The piece of film you are about to see has been years in the making. Careful staking out of the environs (the derelict patch next door to my old apartment) has been undertaken and this film is the result of many hours of waiting for just the right conditions (post rain.) David Attenborough need not fear. Rarely could I be bothered to go out after a rainstorm to see if the cows were mooing. 

But first, back to the beginning.

When I first walked past this bit of land and heard cows mooing I thought I must be mad. I stopped and listened: it was a herd of cows, mooing. The property had been a restaurant when we moved in and after they ceased trading some people came in to do a demolition job. It was only half done; I assume the money ran out. A pretty, open to the elements house remained among the raging undergrowth.

I peered in through the railings. There were definitely no cows here. Perhaps, I thought, in days gone by this bit of Bangkok was rural. Perhaps this is the site of a famous but terrible cow massacre. This mooing is the manifestation of their spirits being disturbed. I was spooked.

Somewhere along the line someone burst my theory and told me it wasn’t a cow ghost graveyard; they were toads mooing. Yeah right, I thought, because we all know toads and frogs say ‘rivit.’ I know which hypothesis I think is more believable.

I was upset when just before I was going to the UK for the summer, I saw that the land was going to be redeveloped by Ootoya restaurants. Where would the spirits of the unhappy bovines go? Where would the toads live?

A week or so later, on a walk back from an evening meal Husband spotted a couple of the toads lurching across our soi. Intrepid (though slightly short sighted) reporter that I am, I whipped out my camera and chased warty toad across the road. Here he is:

(That's a leaf he's sitting on not a strange anatomical something or other.)

Then while I was in London, Husband caught the mooing on his 'phone late one night walking back to the apartment. This is wildlife filming at its best. If there’s any shake to the camera, it’s not the Singha beer…

I have covered cows in Bangkok previously here.