The tadpoles went home

The tadpoles outgrew their little container and it was time for them to go back to the pond. Many of them had all four legs now and had emerged from the water onto the floating little log we put in there. It took alot of convincing, Lily wanted to keep them forever and I had to explain to her that they would not be happy with us any longer because I didn't know what to feed them now that they were froglets. Some of them had already died, but Lily didn't know that. I know someday she is going to have to deal with the full circle of life, but for now, I was not ready to go there, and I wanted to get them back to the pond quick. While I was setting up for the Artist Market, Rich took Lily and Rosie to a pond near his work and they let them go. Lily was a very big girl about it, and Rich promised her that they would come back often and see how they are doing. It was a good experience and Lily learned some very important lessons.



We still have two toads and a frog on the back porch, I thought I'd give them each a proper introduction:

Dicky Boy

Charlie

and Lily's favorite, Prince green Slimy Frog

They eat meal worms and crickets when we get to the pet store. They seem to be doing alright in the aquarium, although I think Prince is a good enough climber to find his way out one of these days. I am trying to prepare Lily for that day and help her to understand that although she loves these pets immensely, they would be much happier living in their own environment.

our tadpoles are growing!!

A few days ago, Rosie and I decided the tadpoles needed something more to eat so we picked some grass and put it in with them. They seemed to really like it, as you can see below! There was one piece that seemed like a dandelion stem that they especially liked and all rushed to and latched onto. We also learned from our research that they really like lettuce. You have to boil it for 10 minutes and then drain it and cool it.


You can see how some of them had thier back legs, but alot of them don't. Their heads were still big and round and they didn't look much like frogs. We were very surprised when all of the sudden yesterday morning a few of them had front legs, and their heads had changed shape to look much more frog like. Their eyes are starting to raise and stick up and their mouths are changing from a sucker type mouth to a more frog like mouth. It really seemed to happen overnight. We went online to do some research and discovered that they need to be able get out of the water as soon as this happens, so we put a floating stick in the water and another one that they could climb up on. We watched closely to see what they would do and they immediately got very excited about it. Within a few minutes they figured out how to climb up and were sitting on the top of the floating log. I am very surprised at how little they still are, I thought they would be much bigger by the time they were doing this. They are only about the size of my pinky fingernail. Here are some photos we took tonight:




Rich was cleaning some fish he brought home from fishing tonight and he was able to show Lily what a gill looks like. Lily and I looked at lots of photos on the internet and learned many interesting things about frogs. It's kind of like one big science fair around here and we have a regular frog farm on the back porch. Lily brought home another addition to the family today. At Grammy and Papa's house she caught a green 'slimy' tree frog. In Lily's own words, he has special feet with suckers for climbing just like and octopus and his name is Prince slimy green frog!!