I love toads so much, I have tattoo of one on my forearm

A TEACHER has had a tattoo to pay homage to her volunteer work with the Henley Toad Patrol.

Milly Kennedy, 40, a tutor at The Henley College, has been a member of the group for seven years.

Each year, the volunteers carry thousands of toads across the busy Marlow Road to their spawning pond to avoid them being squashed by traffic.

Mrs Kennedy already had a number of tattoos and wanted to add to her collection to surprise the other volunteers.

She went to tattoo artist Joshua Addley at Hart Street Tattoo, having the 5cm line drawing of a toad with dots on its body put on her right forearm. This took about half an hour.

The ink marking is her eighth tattoo with others including a phoenix, a heart, flowers and her 14-year-old son’s name, Ethan Proctor, who attends Gillotts School. Mrs Kennedy said the toad tattoo was an expression of herself and her life. She said: “For three months of the year, patrolling is a lifestyle for me — I love it. Tattoos aren’t for everybody but I’ve got quite a few and piercings as well, so it’s a way for me to express myself aesthetically.

“I had wanted a toad tattoo for such a long time and I had other ones anyway, so the thought was to get a tattoo that nobody I knew had and to pay homage to that time of my life. I just thought everyone would appreciate it.

“I want to continue volunteering and have enjoyed it for so many years.”

She said she explained to Joshua the sort of design she wanted when she went to his parlour in
September.

“It was all over fairly quickly,” she said. “It was very pain-free but I don’t find tattoos very painful because I’m a woman and I’ve given birth.”

Mrs Kennedy said she was concerned about other people’s reactions but was pleasantly surprised by the comments she received.

She said: “I thought ‘I’m going to look like such a nerd with my toad tattoo’, but everyone in the group had comments or liked the picture, saying how fantastic or brilliant it was.

“It’s important to me because it raises awareness of how important these creatures are.

“They’ve been doing this journey for thousands of years and now we have busy roads. The least we can do as humans is help them get across the road without too much danger.”

When she lived in Marlow as a child and used to travel with her mother to Henley in the evenings during the toad spawning season, she became curious about the group and wanted to get involved.

Mrs Kennedy said: “I remember being with my mum once and wondered what all these people were doing out on the road with buckets at night and she told me they were picking up toads and carrying them across the road. I said that’s what I wanted to do but I wasn’t old enough.

“When I moved to Henley 10 years ago, I contacted the group on Facebook and they got back to me and I got in and had an induction and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Mrs Kennedy said being a member of the patrol was satisfying, especially considering the innocence of the amphibians.

“It’s one of the most rewarding things you can do,” she said. “Toads are just wonderful creatures that have no defence mechanism, so helping them cross the road is just such an enjoyable experience.

“Until you have done it, it’s hard to understand how rewarding, relaxing and therapeutic it is — spotting them, picking them up and putting them in the bucket.

“It’s also good for my mental health. It’s good exercise in the fresh air and at the same time you’re helping nature and the environment — it’s a no-brainer.”