A surgeon has grafted a little boy's toe onto his hand to replace a thumb he lost in a lawnmower accident.

Three-year-old Alex Petre-Mears stuck his left hand into the blades to rescue a spider at his home on the Chanel Island of Sark.

He lost his index finger, which was wrenched from his hand in a corkscrew motion, and his thumb was sliced off.

Despite efforts to reattach the thumb at Salisbury District Hospital, the digit failed to "take" and had to be amputated.

But after Alex's initial wounds had healed, microsurgeon Michael Cadier took the little boy's second toe and attached it as a new "thumb" in a seven-hour operation.

Mr Cadier told BBC News Online that the thumb is crucial to the functioning of the hand.

He added: "It is a technically challengning operation in a child of this age. All the nerves and arteries and muscles and ligaments are so much smaller than in an adult."

All the work was carried out under a microscope magnifying by 36 times what would be visible to the naked eye.

Even the diameter of the suture thread is many times smaller than a human hair.

And where Alex's toe was removed, Mr Cadier tightened surrounding ligaments to make sure that there was no gap.

Mr Cadier added: "When Alex was waking up after surgery, he must have been dreaming and he was already moving his thumb.

"At the moment, he can't feel anything in the thumb, because the nerves haven't had time to grow properly yet.

"But the surgery has worked and it is of great satisfaction to me that it has done so."

Alex's mother, Sarah, 25, told BBC News Online: "It is marvellous - all the veins and nerves have grown properly and the thumb is going to work.

"He is already wiggling it subconsciously. It doesn't even look strange. The only difference will be that the nail will be smaller.

"Alex doesn't miss his toe because they did the surgery so brilliantly that unless you count his toes, you wouldn't know that one was missing.

"I think it helps that he is so young, he has no problems at all in accepting that he has a new thumb and that it used to be his toe.

"The day we found out that Alex's thumb hadn't taken was a really bad day.

"We had managed to get Alex to a hospital that would be able to reattach his thumb, but it had taken too long and the thumb was dead by the time he got there.

"We waited a week to see if the reattachment would be a success, and it wasn't."

Because Sarah and her husband Edward, Alex and their 17-month-old daughter lived on the tiny island of Sark - they have since relocated to the Caribbean - getting to hospital was a frantic and frustrating procedure.

Sarah said: "The accident happened after Alex told his dad he wanted to go to the toilet quickly. He was mowing the lawn at the time, but let the lawnmower go and picked up Alex to take him into the house.

"But Alex ran back out, and before his dad could stop him, he shouted 'spider' and put his hand into the lawnmower to get it."

The first leg of Alex's trip to hospital had to be undertaken in a tractor, as no cars are allowed on Sark.

He was then taken by boat to Guernsey, where an ambulance was waiting for them and took them to the island's hospital.

But hospital staff told them they did not have the facilities to stitch Alex's thumb back on. They had a choice - either to pay to charter a plane themselves to the mainland, or allow his hand to remain mutilated.

Sarah said: "There was no choice, we flew Alex to Salisbury, where there was another road ambulance waiting for us, and got him to Salisbury District Hospital.

"The accident happened at 2pm, and by the time we got him to Salisbury, it was 7.15pm. In those five and a quarter hours his thumb died."

Mr Cadier said: "As far as Alex is concerned, the angels took away his thumb, and now he has a new one which used to be his toe.

"He will soon be able to use his new thumb as if it had always been there."

Sarah and Edward are appealing for dontations to Sarum Ward at Salisbury District Hospital.