The Polliwog Project

Saturday afternoon was spent enjoying the sunshine and riding bikes up and down our street. Owen was not too keen on the idea of learning to ride his bike (no surprise there) so he and I took a breather in the front yard by pestering some ant hills while Steve and AJ went bike-riding some more.

15 minutes later Steve-o and AJ come back hollering about needing a jar because we had to "save the tadpoles".
Up the block from our house, and around the corner we have a retention pond which the boys had decided to go and have a look at. With all the rain from the tornado stuff the other day, the pond had overflowed a little, then receded back, leaving in its wake a few small puddles with quite a few stranded tadpoles inside.

I grabbed a tupperware container from the house and we all took a walk back up to the retention pond on our "mission" to save the tadpoles.
AJ was singing the Wonderpets theme song along the way. "Wonderpets, wonderpets, we're on our way! To rescue baby tadpoles and save the day! We're not too big but we're really tough and when we work together we've got the right stuff! Gooooooooo Wonderpets! Yay!"
Sorry, it's a preschool thing.

Anyway, we spent the next half hour plucking squirmy tadpoles from the puddles and throwing them back (or chucking them back in, if AJ was doing it) into the pond. We couldn't save them all, because some of them would burrow under the grass/sand/weeds/algae and we couldn't get them out, but we probably saved about 25 of them or so.

While we're doing this, Steve-o and I had the grand idea to bring a few of them home and see if we couldn't grow us our own little frog family, so we kept 3 of them, scooped up some of their nasty pond water and brought them home. They wriggled around in the tupperware container while we did a little internet research on the care and keeping of tadpoles and then we went out and purchased a small fish tank.

Some tidbits about raising tadpoles, in case you ever care to do it yourselves:
*Tadpoles cannot live in tap water or they'll die. If you DO use tap water, you have to let it sit out 4-5 days so all the chemicals and other stuff in it are null before you put your tadpoles in the water. We just keep them in pond water.
*Tadpoles like lettuce or spinach leaves. But you have to boil or freeze it first.
*Tadpoles also thrive on fish food.
*Tadpoles are slimy and squirmy
*Tadpoles do not survive well when a small child accidentally steps in their puddle, and thus, on them. AJ learned this lesson in the first 5 minutes we were at the pond.

Anyway, 3 days in and the tadpoles are still alive and (seemingly) well.
We'll keep you posted if they make it to full frog-dom.
And let me know if you want some tadpoles of your own. We've got PLENTY down at the pond.

Oh, and their names?? Fish.
All of them.
Are named Fish.

So says Owen.