Tonight I heard a toad - my first of the year. My heart soared.

I was up far too late. It was a light but foggy night and I was letting the dogs out for their final Ps and poos. Whilst the BBC 24 hour news intoned horrific stories behind the double glazed garden doors, the toad croaked – and told me the beginning of Spring was happening. And he makes my “Wind in the Willows” winter complete.

The key characters of Kenneth Grahame’s delightful stories are Toad, Mole and Ratty. Toad is the only one truly welcome here.

“Ratty” should not exist thanks to next door’s “killer cat” but Pearl seems to be off her game at the moment and I have seen the most splendid rat running across my back terrace recently. It is a beautiful version of its species – large, well-fed, brown, healthy and clean looking. It’s not a dirty, grey, straggle-haired sewer rat – let’s face it there are no sewers here where we all cope with sess pits and drain-aways. It’s a beautiful, healthy farm/countryside rat. And it’s big. It is about 28 cms long plus its tail -like the one below.

And it's clear it has been living in my log store and moving from there to my neighbours' as it feels fit. Its fairly large droppings are the evidence both of it and its size.

There were smaller rats outside here when I first arrived. As a new owner arriving from London I shuddered and put some poison down where the dogs couldn’t get it and I hadn’t seen a rat since then – until now. But, in the nearly five years since I have lived here, I have become less and less able to kill or even imagine killing any living creature except mosquitos and flies. I gently capture spiders, bees, moths, dragon flies, hornets etc and simply move them out of the house. Rat poison kills horribly. One should leave water for them apparently because it makes them thirsty as they die. This all sounds horrific and I am not sure I can do it to this beautiful, intelligent creature. I just want it to move away.

Also tonight, a mouse was scampering on the wall under my bird feeders. It was so brave and ignored me completely. I even went into the house, called my Japanese ward, Sayaka, to come see and it was still there when she came out to join me. So I took pictures and it "froze" in the flash but remained with its food source. With its huge ears and white belly it was as cute as could be and there is no way I would want to kill it. The rat was substantially larger but no different in any other major way. Why should I want to kill it any more than the mouse, unless it wants to come and live indoors with me or threatens the dogs?

Of course, one mouse or one rat “seen” usually means many more of each unseen. I hope that the much more plentiful food available at the farm down the path (from whence I hope it came to eat my bird food) will lure it back again.

“Mole” has caused me much greater trouble this winter. The lower end of my lawn now resembles a battlefield. When Mole appeared “Dorset Reg”, who mows the lawn, advised putting empty wine bottles into the ground. Apparently, the wind passing over the open necks makes a noise moles don’t like.

However, my mole seems more than happy with the songs from Cotes de Gasgogne and Sauvignon Blanc bottles and has gone on to decorate the whole area.

He headed to the pond and I was seriously worried he might burrow through the sand, under-liner and cause a leak in the butyl liner but luckily the pond remains intact. I also bought four buzzy, solar “mole detractors” from Amazon - to no avail. So the lawn is now adorned with brown clay/soil mounds, two green bottles and four buzzy mole deterents. Not my idea of the ideal lawn.

But the idea of a mole trap? No, sorry. Again I can’t do it. I just hope Mole heads into the fields and has a happy time there. Reg and I will have work to do to reinstate the lawn later in the season.

I have just nipped out before heading to bed (even more horrifically late having written this) and toad has been joined in song by others and by frogs. Oh joy! That sound does something very special to me. Weird but true.

Watch this space re dealing with Mole and Rat and the survival of the progeny of toad in the coming months but, despite the invaders, I am deliriously happy. Spring is on the way.