Bufo Traditional Geocache
geoartcache: Cache gone awol.
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Printmaker, Hester Cox has created a series of geo art caches that take the seeker on a journey through Hackfall Wood with each cache illustrating a story of one of the many creatures that live there and leaving the visitor with a book of impressions from their day.
Bufo: Toad
Tale:
Bufo bufo is the scientific name for the common toad. Toads have long been associated with witches and superstition. Not only were witches thought to have used parts of the toad in their potions but they were also believed to be able to turn into toads so that they could creep about undiscovered. Some people believed that anyone who was a witch would have a sign of the toad on their body to identify them such as a toad’s foot shaped mark on their skin.
Toads were also thought to possess a highly valuable jewel within their skulls known as the ‘Toadstone’. The Toadstone was able to detect the presence of poison and would become warm if there was poison nearby. This meant that it was very valuable to its owner who could also set it in a ring where it would become paler in colour when poison was detected. The toadstones were actually fossilised teeth of an extinct fish from the Jurassic period called Lepidotes. These fossils were used from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century as toadstones and were also thought to help prevent the owner from getting bubonic plague.
Apart from the darker stories surrounding toads, they were believed to be symbols of fertility in some cultures and toad-shaped amulets and statues have been found in temples.
Hackfall:
Toads are one of a number of amphibians that live in Hackfall. Like the smooth and palmate newts and the frogs that you can find in the pond, toads live in water and on land. Toads secrete a substance from their skin that is an irritant and prevents them being eaten by most other animals. Only grass snakes and hedgehogs don’t seem to be put off by this. If they can stay away from them, and also cats and cars, it is possible for toads to live to be forty!
If you don’t actually see one in Hackfall, you might see their eggs or tadpoles in early spring. Toads lay their eggs in long strings as opposed to clumps like frogs spawn.
This geocache is part of a series of caches hidden in Hackfall as part of North Yorkshire Open Studios - http://www.nyos.org.uk
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Va n zbffl ubyybj ng nyhz fcevatf naq gur fgrccvat fgbarf