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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Tadpoles

I would have thought, well I did think, that raising a few tadpoles would be a relatively simple, fun task. Well I am here to tell you it is a bit stressful.

They are quite fragile, they can turn canabalistic and they grow legs and jump (right out of the box.. to who knows where...maybe the cat knows. I prefer not to think about it).

Add in that I really, really don't have any desire to raise cane toads. This means hours of googling and peering at computer images and then into murky creek water contained in tall glass jars trying to work out colouring and if that tadpole has eyes on the side of it's head or more toward the middle.


They are quite cute tho right? and Autumn means tadpoles - loads and loads of them in seemingly every water pocket nearby. I love frogs... this adds to the stress of pinching frothy foam (frogs lay in clusters of foam, toads lay eggs in gelatinous strings) for childhood curiosity (science) the guilt when one invariably dies is weighing heavily on my mind.

They eat wilted spinach - how about that? They will also eat each other we discovered to our horror if they run out of spinach... this has lead to solitary confinement for one; who my big girl declared instantly as a cane toad, nothing else could be so wicked! (I think, well I'm pretty sure, it is a frog tadpole).


His eyes are on the side of his head right?... Paranoia is settling in.

5 comments:

Rebecca said...

Wish we had tadpoles in our puddles... we seem to have mosquito babies and thats about it... XX

m. bloom said...

Cannibalistic tadpoles... ugh. But cute, yes!

Hinterland Mama said...

Shannon, I'm experiencing the same dilemma! I too have been studying the Google tadpole images trying to work out which is which.
I am on the Sunshine Coast and we also have many tadpoles around. I have so many fond memories of raising froglets as a child in West Australia.
You are much braver than me for actually taking the next step.

Anna Heath said...

I had tadpoles once, but one escaped when it grew legs and I never saw it again. :( I found that the bigger frog attempted to eat the smaller one. The frogs also only ate live food, they would not notice anything dead. We had to catch more than 3 flies a day to keep the frogs going, which meant they were very hard to feed in the Winter.

Anonymous said...

you make me laught. After your describtion i learn a new ward in english.
Ariella