Madam, I am, as you will soon understand, not in the habit of writing to your newspaper but, needs must, I have a complaint to make. Nothing light-hearted like "Why does the town clock very seldom indicate the correct time?" or even "Should the incontinent dogs of Ross wear nappies?"

Please don't ignore my letter of complaint because, put bluntly, for me it is a matter of life and death.

To clarify matters allow me to introduce myself. I am warty-looking and slow-moving, a common toad, please call me Bufo Bufo.

Toads are a quiet group except, I admit, in the mating season when we males do give out discrete "here-we-are croaks" to attract our lady-loves. We live in a variety of moist places tucked away under a rock or in some dark secluded place during the day; then crawling out at night time to forage. Amongst the foods we relish are delicacies like slugs and insect larvae that you humans call pests.

We live solitary lives most of the year but in early Spring we older toads make our great expedition. We crawl off, sometimes it's several miles away, to our chosen place, usually a pond or lake.

Every year I and other toads, living around the fields of Ross by the river, embark on this epic journey. Faithfully, year after year we converge to a quiet, water-filled culvert under a road. There we spawn then leave our eggs to hatch; as tadpoles to feed, to grow then metamorphose into a knot of, small-as-a-ladybird, new toads.

Our chosen spawning water once was clean, with areas where water plants grew. It was lively with sticklebacks, crawling with snails and supported a myriad of insect larvae on which our tadpoles thrived.

Now look at it! Polluted with rubbish; here a television set, there a shopping trolley; everywhere beer cans, bottles, and bits of paper.

The plants are dying; only a few sticklebacks hang on to life. Despite this pollution we have faithfully returned for where else can we go? My complaint is finished but I make a final appeal to your readers.

I, Bufo Bufo, ask you, please, please help clean-up the culvert. It could be a charming place for us, for other wild life, and for you then, 'it's a win /win situation.'

And I am, dear readers, very sure if you communicate to the editor with offers of help towards this clean- up project she will pass them on.

Bufo Bufo