Toad survival poem

Isn't it daft that we humans find it such a struggle to stay dry and warm in winter weather, yet a little toad can huddle up perfectly comfortably under a couple of leaves and sit it out! As for those primroses in my garden I was talking about just now, I've no idea how their silky, tissue-thin petals survived the snow and ice, gales and floods. Not only did they stay alive and upright through those long, merciless batterings of our 2012 winter, but their immaculate, pristine freshness survived too, totally intact: mystery! We'd need a hot soak in the bath and goodness knows what all to get anything like back to normal after an ordeal like that, we, Earth's rulers.

There's a poem about a toad coping with winter on my Nature page, if interested.