Life on the Road

You know, biology was never this much fun when I was in school!

Our LLL leader, Kristin (check out her cool website - henna and belly masks!) had gotten a big bucketful of tadpoles from the pond in a friend’s yard, and she offered to share.

We put them in a plastic crate.  We have well water, not city water, so we figured that would be okay for them.  We also went down to the canal nearby and picked a few water plants to spruce things up a little bit.  Jewel surveys the results…

We followed the feeding recommendation we had been given - cat kibble!

Within a few days, many of the little swimmies were sprouting back legs, and soon the first froggie started climbing out of the water…

They are tree frogs, so once they got old enough to lose their tail (at least to the nub stage), we released them in some of the abundant trees in our yard.  They stopped eating kibble and lived off their tails for a day or so, but would soon starve without the ability to find “real frog food”.

On the first Frog Freedom day, “Sparky” (above) and “Zippy” were the first in the brood to go out into the wild…

The next day no frogs were ready to leave us.  Then there were 4.  Then another 3.

We were wary of the number of “almost frogs” we saw yesterday, so today when we took the lid off to check on them we did it out by the Frog Freedom tree.  It was an amazing sight, and happened so fast I couldn’t even focus and get a picture.  Probably 4 or 5 frogs leaped eagerly away as soon as they had the chance.  Another 3 we released in a calmer manner…

 (Wolf’s hand gives you an idea just how tiny these guys are!)

There are only a few left, so our little biology project is coming to an end.

But who knows what tomorrow will bring!