Tadpoles

Back in the day I remember going to the marshy area near our well to collect tadpoles in big mayonnaise jars with the neighbor kids. I ALSO remember the time I collected a bunch of tadpoles, put them in a fish bowl and stuck them on top of a crate in the TV room, so I could watch them grow into frogs. My mom, bless her heart, never complained (that I remember, anyway) about having a bowl of murky. stinky water filled with wanna-be frogs that would one day have the ability to jump out of the bowl and all over her house. Then one day she put the bowl outside on the porch so she could "dust" and "vacuum" without disturbing them.  She "accidentally forgot about them" and they fried in the hot sun. And that was the end of that.

Now we have a new generation of tadpole catchers. Isabella and Teddy have made several trips to the creek, but tadpole numbers are low due to the lack of rain and warm weather. Teddy managed to catch a few and gave one to Isabella. I gave Isabella a Mason jar for her new little treasure.

And then I overheard this conversation:

Ted: Isabella, if a frog grows up and it's a girl then it can lay eggs and have more tadpoles. (I brace myself wondering if this is going to turn into Isabella's first lesson on the facts of life. It does not.)

Isa: Great Teddy! I'm going to watch it every single day for it to grow into a frog.

Ted: It takes a looooooong time for it to turn into a frog--like 65 days. Or months. It's a really long, long, time. Let me come to your house and I'll help you build a habitat for it.

Well, Teddy, our resident biologist, was wrong. It took neither 65 days or months for the tadpole to sprout legs and arms. It was more like a week. I thought we had a little more time, since it hadn't lost its tail yet. I also thought a few times it was dead, because it got very still its jar. But that little tadpole was only plotting his escape. l walked into the kitchen one morning to find a frog-less mason jar.  So now we have a .5 inch little froglet jumping somewhere around our house. Isabella misses her tadpole. And that is the end of that.