Happy First Birthday, Charlie!

Just over a year ago, Charlie was born.
July 1, 2010.



I have no newborn pictures of her since we didn't even know of her existence until she was almost two months old.

Born to a mother who was an Australian Shepherd/ Lab mix and a father who was a Labrador, Charlie is 3/4 Lab and 1/4 Australian Shepherd. Which would explain why she tends to push the little boys around in the yard. I suppose she is herding them.

We received a call in late August from friends asking if we would be interested in taking one of the puppies that they had left.

My memory being what it is, I cannot remember how many brothers and sisters Charlie had when she was born, although I do remember there being a little chocolate brown puppy and a black puppy there when we went to look at Charlie.

I also remember being told that she was a very sick little puppy in those early weeks of life.
So sickly that it was a question as to whether she would live.

Would we consider taking her?

Oh! I was ready for a puppy! I was so ready. After all, they are so sweet and soft and furry. And that puppy breath!
I couldn't wait to see how the little boys would love on her.
And I couldn't wait to see what the big kids would say! They were on a trip to the Grand Canyon with Grandma and Grandpa, so this puppy would be a huge surprise!

I was ready!

I remember going over to our friends' house that evening and playing with the puppies and their momma.
Sweet little things.

 Of course, we would consider taking her!

We decided to name her Charlie.

It's funny the feelings I experienced when we brought her home.
I remember feeling a lot like I felt when I brought a new baby home...like things would never be the same.

Overwhelmed.

But then Carrie and William came home and took over the mothering responsibilities.
All except getting up with her in the middle of the night.
Looking back, though, even that didn't last all that long.

That reminds me of my babies too.  Those days seemed so long at the time, but they were over in moments.

And now, we are celebrating Charlie's first birthday...











And her "Gotcha Day"...September 6...the anniversary of the day that we brought Charlie home to live with us.

What a great dog she is.

Happy Birthday and Happy Gotcha Day, Charlie.

We love you!

Enjoying Puppy Love,

Alive and Well

That's right!
Our little tadpole has grown into a funny frog!
I say funny, because he is so much fun to watch!
And because he has little black toes! How cute is that?!

Last Sunday we decided that it was time to move him into an aquarium. I am so thankful for the internet! We found some really good information on African Clawed Frogs and so were able to make some informed decisions about his environment.

Of course, I still worry about him. I have enjoyed having him around so much that I worry that something will happen to him...that I'll accidentally hurt him somehow. I worry that he will be hurt or sick and won't be able to tell me about it.

We've all become pretty attached to him. You should see how Matthew smiles and waves his arms when he sees the aquarium. And how Joshua gets his stool and stands there on it talking to him...and then says, "Mom, make the Zac boice (voice)." And how Carrie and William pass by and check in on him..."Hey, Zac!" I think that even Paul might say "Hi" when he passes by. :)

The past two days, he has been a little sluggish and has spent a lot of time hiding from us. He even swam up into the castle and hid. William and I couldn't find him for a little while! Then, when I saw his little foot hanging out of the castle, I was just sure that he was dead.

But I was wrong.
He's alive and well...as far as I can tell.

I pray for him each time I pass his little home in our kitchen.
I know that God doesn't want me to worry...and that He cares for even a little African Clawed Frog.

A Sad Day

This will be a sad day in our home.

Like every morning, I woke up and went out to the kitchen to make Paul's lunch and start the coffee.
Like every morning, I went to the drawer that holds the remote for the television, so that I could check up on the weather for the day.
Like every morning, I said a quick, "Good morning!" to the tadpoles that are quickly changing into frogs.

But this morning, something on the kitchen floor caught my eye.
One of the tadpoles, the one Carrie named Tiff, I think, had leaped out of the aquarium and landed on the kitchen floor. She had to have been swimming awfully fast to have missed the counter top and landed on the floor.

At first I was a bit nauseous.
Then I was a little emotional.
I was torn between going to wake Paul (I think for moral support more than anything) and just taking care of it myself.
I even filled another cup of water to put her in...just in case she could be revived.

Finally, after pulling myself together, I used a paper towel to pick her up and realized that it was too late for her.

I'm just very sad now.
Zac is swimming alone in the tank. I've put a cooling rack over the top of the tank to prevent him from leaping out too.
Had I known that she could get out, I would have put the rack on the tank earlier.
She was the faster of the two...lots of energy. She swam so fast around the tank. We described her as flighty.
But I never saw this coming.

Who knew?
She was so close to becoming a frog.
Both tadpoles had developed their back legs and were using them to swim. They both had teeny tiny little front legs too. They were also eating quite a bit now. All that was left for her was losing her tail.

It's just so doggone sad.

The instructional guide that comes with the tadpoles says that success doesn't depend on your tadpoles reaching adulthood. Success is measured by how much you learn about frogs. Death is a part of life.

Blah, blah, blah.

Maybe it would have been different if she would have died of "natural causes" or because of water contamination or overfeeding. Those are the things that the instructional manual warned about.

But leaping out of the tank?

Please learn from me...put a screen of some sort on your tadpole tank after your tadpoles develop back legs. The combination of a strong tail and back legs are a recipe for disaster.

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.