The Plunge

That's right!

We took "the plunge." We bought a frog hatchery kit about a month ago. It's one of those kits that comes with everything you need to watch a tadpole turn into a frog...everything except the tadpoles. You have to send for those.

Several years ago, we tried the butterfly hatchery kit. That was very fun! We sent for the caterpillars and then watched them metamorphose (is that right?!) into butterflies. Then, one sunny afternoon, Carrie, William, and I released them onto our butterfly bush in the flower garden. It didn't take them long to start flying happily around the yard.

Frogs, I have learned, are different.
You can't release an African water frog into your environment because it will cause "an imbalance in your ecosystem."

Oh.

If...and I say if because we've been warned that many tadpoles don't make it to froghood (I know that's not right)...if our tadpoles do grow to be healthy adult frogs, then we either have to keep them as pets or we have to find a suitable home for them.

The good thing about the African water frog is that he lives in the water all the time and doesn't have to eat live food. If we had received leopard frog tadpoles, we would have had to prepare a terrarium rather than an aquarium.
And provide live food.
Or put liver on a stick and train the frog to eat it.
The African water frog really is less work and maintenance than the leopard frog.

I guess.

This video was taken about three weeks ago when they were just itty bitty tadpoles. They were so itty bitty that I had to take a video of them...a picture wouldn't pick them up.




They aren't so itty bitty anymore.
Today, they are about three inches long, from their heads to the end of their squiggly little tales. They're huge! We catch ourselves saying, "Good morning, little tadpoles...I mean, big tadpoles!"

And they get bigger everyday!

They were shipped to us in a tube of water packed inside a very well padded envelope. We received three live tadpoles and, we think, the remains of one that didn't make it...although it was so small that we're not sure that's what it was.

One of the tadpoles died after just a week. We were sure that the other two would die soon after, but now after almost a month, we still have two very big, very healthy-looking tadpoles.

I think they look healthy. I don't know...I've never had tadpoles before.

Well, that not true.
When I was a little girl, my brother and I found tadpoles in a water-filled tractor tire track down the lane from our house. We collected them in a cup and brought them back up to the house so that we could watch them change into frogs. We knew that we had to find a "just right" home for them, so we put them in the best place we knew...our cows' drinking trough.

Hmmmm. How smart were we?

I digress...

I'm now getting over thinking that they are kind of creepy. I still won't set my coffee cup beside their bowl, but I do enjoy just sitting and watching them.

Carrie has even given them names now. The calm one is "Zac" and the flighty one is "Tiff."

I love that they come to the side of the bowl to watch me when I am close by. I love that they have little mustaches. I love the squirmy little tails that flutter continuously.

When we received them, I didn't picture us having pet frogs, but now I wonder how I could ever say goodbye to these two little guys.

Anyway I hope they're both guys.
Or both girls.
Not one of each.

You know.