Tadpole Story 4: Where Will They Go?

On August 20, there was a passing sprinkle. Not enough to register in the gauge, or to help at all, but enough to embolden the first mountain chorus frog to move from its leaf to the container edge.

Then it did a move worthy of Cary Grant in North by Northwest.

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And just as desperate (Grant played an innocent man mistaken for a spy and relentlessly pursued by the FBI).

When the droplets dried up, I couldn't find the froglet. And I wondered where it had gone. Where could it go?  For those of you getting rain this summer, it's probably hard to imagine gardens and forest without a single damp spot in them. Rock-hard soil and everything limp, wilted, parched and fried. That's what's going on here. There is no water, anywhere, in the soil or the leaf litter or in the streambeds. Lakes, rivers and ponds, yes, there's still water there, but how is a frog the size of my pinky fingernail going to get to them from the top of a dry ridge? It is going to dry up and die as soon as it leaves the pool. I know it in my bones. And I know I have to do something about it.

If these things are going to start metamorphosing, I realize that I have to put them somewhere where they will have both a body of water and moist surrounds. I can't give them that on this sunbaked ridge. Once they're out of the pool, and instinct tells them to disperse, it's out of my hands. And, after months of heavy work and lots of expenditure on water, they are dead. 

You see, I've messed with everything. And messed it all up. The tadpoles would have died the first time the puddle dried up in May! But I couldn't let that happen. That puddle would have dried up ten times had I not been hauling water to it. So I made my own bed here by carrying tadpoles from May into mid August, when by all rights they should have long since returned to the soil. But I said no. And what I didn't know when I made the commitment was that the rains would stop completely, and there would be no water for them anywhere. Oops. Now what?

The fact that they hadn't metamorphosed in a normal time span (6-8 weeks) tells me that they somehow sensed that to leave the puddle would be to die. Why change into an air-breathing frog if there's still water here, and there's absolutely nowhere else to go? I lie awake at night, considering all the possibilities. Do they need to feel the wide swings in barometric pressure that accompany storm fronts? Do they need rain sluicing into the puddle to assure them that it's safe to leave? I don't know. I just know that their development had been arrested, and nothing was happening for them. And now that I've taken them in, they're changing, and I have to do something to meet them where they are. At the very least, I have to get myself out from under the need to continue caring for them.

The trees are dropping their leaves on August 20. It's so very sad. August, normally a time of wild abundance in insects and birds, is eerily still and silent. August has been canceled. We're going straight to October.

I can't let them keep dispersing into the desert, only to die, after three long months of toil.

They're so perfect; I owe them better.

 What a rotten pickle to be in! 

The only thing I can think to do is to take them to the beaver pond on Dean's Fork. 

The one whose dam had, for years, had been dynamited by a local jerk who didn't even own the land it was on, until he got a nice visit from the wildlife officer. A little bird tipped the officer. Only then did he finally quit destroying the beavers and their habitat, against the express wishes of the landowner. I feel a very strong sense of stewardship over this pond. 

I pour the three tadpole tubs slowly through a strainer to catch all the tadpoles.

They look so much bigger and stronger than they did when I brought them in nine days ago. 

Lots of strong hind legs on these gray tree frog tadpoles!

I found two dragonfly larvae (which had been feeding on the tadpoles!)--here's one of them

and one tiny froglet in training. I put it in a Tupperware so it wouldn't drown in all the sloshing, because once they crawl out, they have lungs and have to breathe air.

I poured everyone into a joint compound bucket, loaded them in the car, and headed for Dean's Fork. 

Curtis, who hates water, came down the steep bank to make sure Ma didn't fall into the pond. I'm not sure he'd have swum out to rescue me had I plunked in.

I cast a last long look at the pond that would finish the work I started in May with these tadpoles. Had I known what keeping them in water would entail over the next three  months, I'd have taken them straight to the beaver pond. But I had to learn the hard way, which seems to be the only way I learn.

I've spent the entire day gathering photos and videos, importing them, and writing up this experience, for you of course, but for me, too, so I have a record of it. I want my photos of different tadpoles and young froglets to be out there for people to refer to. I wanted to document the story of trying to keep a tadpole puddle going in an historic drought. I want to remember what it was like so I don't try anything like this again. 

Though I can’t manage to post on my blog more than once a month or so, writing up this foray into the frog world feels more like my real work than the stuff I do all day. It’s personal. It couldn’t be done by anyone but me. That’s the difference. 

Next time, if it ever rains again and if spring comes to this parched ridge, the first time the puddle dries down, I'll scoop the tadpoles up and take them straight to Dean's Fork.

Sure I will.

Postscript: After I wrote this, it got hot again, so hot I was glad the tadpoles were free in the beaver pond. It was as if the sky was trying to kill everything beneath it here on earth. I thought it couldn't get any drier, but it did. Despair doesn't quite describe how that felt. My friend and conservation hero Nancy Stranahan, also suffering for all her plant and wildlife friends through this horrible drought, read one of my posts about the drought, called me on the phone, and helped me get to that place of giving up. I had to let it go, and tell myself it likely wouldn't rain again until November. Just throw up my hands and say, OK, I'm going to keep watering, but I will not keep hoping it will rain. Weirdly, that helped. Giving up, expecting absolutely nothing, was the only thing that helped. 

I will always be grateful for Nancy's intervention. I picked up the pieces of my mind and got back to work. 

And then it began to rain again, in a tentative way, on Wednesday, August 28, at 6:23 PM. A great rushing sound came from the north and there was lightning and thunder and a downpour so sweet and so badly needed I nearly wept. But I laughed instead, like a lunatic. I walked around in the rain and lightning, unafraid, smelling the petrichor, until I was soaked. I splashed in tiny puddles. I raised my face to the sky and let it beat down on me. We got 0.4". On August 29 we got 0.6". And then on August 31, we were gifted with 1.2", and the leaves that had been furled came unfurled. The white snakeroot that was limp as Kleenex has burst into bloom. So has the mistflower. It's too late for the trees, most of which have yellowed and dropped their leaves, saving their energy for next spring. The ground is deep in yellow and brown leaves. I don't know which of them will make it through the winter. It looks like most of my spicebush has died, and many dogwoods. But you never know. Maybe they'll come back. There won't be any dogwood flowers next spring, that much I know.

It will take many more such rains to begin to catch up, but I rolled up several hundred feet of hose today, and with the hours I don't have to spend watering every evening, I did a three-day deep clean of my house, which had been like a neatly kept dust museum through the drought. I simply didn't have the energy to clean. It all went into watering and worrying, getting up the next day and doing it all over again.

Thank you for reading after this long hiatus. It's felt good to talk with you again. Even though, in the age of Facebook and Instagram, nobody comments on blogs any more, I appreciate your time, and I know you're out there.

Tadpole Story 3: Adorable Froglets!

The night I brought the tadpoles in and put them in deep cool rainwater from my rainbarrel, I slept better than I had in weeks. Who lies awake at night worrying about a couple hundred tadpoles? Me, apparently. I mean, that wasn't all I was worrying about. I've been worrying about what is going to happen if it never rains again this summer. Every single time a storm line would form, it would dry up and dissipate before it hit us. Every time. Week after week, the storms would form, they'd predict rain, and it would not happen. I realized that, with the land so parched and dry, there was no moisture to give any feedback to the clouds. So when a storm front hits this tinder-dry air, it simply dries up. Even Hurricane Debby split, and part swung west and north of us, and part swung east, and we got not a drop from her. Brother Bob, who'd been just as parched in Virginia, got five inches. I was glad for him. 

It feels very strange to wish for another hurricane, as destructive as they are, but I find myself wishing for a hurricane. 

The next morning I got up, looked in the pools, and there, like a benediction, were two froglets poised on the leaves of the floating heart I'd put in there, hoping. Hoping someone would emerge, someday. I couldn't believe my eyes. 16 August 2024:

They were too small and delicate to be gray tree frogs. My friend Laura helped me key them out--it seemed that most of the tadpoles I had were mountain chorus frogs! This is a regional specialty with a rasping, harsh comb-tooth call. For breeding, they zero in on the saddest, most ephemeral mudpuddles and ditches you could imagine. I don't understand how they even exist on this dry old ridge, but they're out there every spring, shouting from the mudpuddles.

Here is a mountain chorus frog tadpole. Note how the tail fin is the same size on either side, not high, wide or crested, and the tail is lightly marked. 

I really studied these little things, trying to figure out what they were. The mottling on the back looks pretty random. They don't have a well-defined cross like Hyla crucifer, the spring peeper. 

This one comes as close to showing a cross on its back as any, but it's not strong enough for  me to say it's a spring peeper. So I'm settling on mountain chorus frog. I can tell you that after a tadpole crawls out and becomes a frog, it sits there for about 24 hours just absorbing its tail before it makes a move.

Three out of 170. I wondered how long this would take, or if any more would change into frogs.

19 August, and the tadpoles are happily eating Tetra pond stix. I'm doing daily water changes, still so leery of losing them to overcrowding and foul water. I watch them like a hawk.

The more I look at them, the more I notice differences. I think this one is a gray treefrog tadpole. Its tail fin is wide and has markings on it, and it also tapers to a pin-like point with no vane around it. 

Laura helps me by sending photos from her reference book on frogs and tadpoles of Ohio. 

Mountain chorus frog is D, with the even vanes on its tail. 

Gray tree frog is E, with the needle-tipped tail and wide well-marked tail fins.

I wanted more information, so I went back into my archives from 2010 and 2011 and 2014, when I successfully raised gray tree frog tadpoles, to look at some of those photos. (They're on the blog, too!)

These are rock-solid gray tree frog tadpoles. Look at the topmost one, showing that well marked pin-tipped tail. I knew what they were because I raised them from a flat egg mat I had gotten out of my fishpond, knowing that the fish would eat the tadpoles as they emerged. 

The top left tadpole shows the gray treefrog form well. 

When they metamorphosed, they looked like tree frogs. Bulkier, bigger, with big feet and legs and toe pads.

Baby gray tree frogs are something really special.

I'd been pretty sure all along that the 2024 puddle hosted more than one species. It seemed the mountain chorus frogs were metamorphosing first, though. 

Next: Where Will They Go? 

Tadpole Story 2: Down in the Muck

 We’re back at the tadpole puddle in my driveway, chronicling my effort to keep it going through a drought now labeled as “Extreme,” and headed for “Exceptional.”  If you want to know how it's going, it's not going well. It's in the upper 90's all this week; trees are dropping their leaves like crazy, and I am disconsolate. Writing and posting this has helped somewhat. We here in Washington Co. Ohio are extremely apprehensive of the Labor Day weekend coming up. Campfires. Fireworks. The slightest spark could ignite our world. Don't do it. Please.

4 July 24. A tiny shower bolstered the pool. By now I'd added leafy branches atop the wire baskets. The heat was absolutely brutal, and the tadpoles badly needed shade. These little leafy huts seemed to do the trick. 

By July 9, it was taking 40 gallons of water at a time to keep the puddle filled. The heat was unreal.

The glug of jugs: very satisfying. But the work of hauling and hoisting 320 pounds of water each time they needed replenishing had gotten old fast. I didn't even want to think about what all that water was costing. We're on city water out here. I could never have done this on well water. My July bill very nearly doubled June's bill, but I clenched my teeth and continued on my fool’s errand. 

August 9. At this point it was all I could do to keep up with the heat. The puddle would draw down to dangerously low levels, and I'd haul another 40 gallons every three days or so. Discouraging. The tadpoles were showing no signs of metamorphosing. I couldn't figure out what was going on. What natural puddle on the planet would still exist by now? I'd been helping these tadpoles out since the third week of May! 

Only three days later, on August 12, I was finally ready to throw in the towel. In this video, I find deer tracks and realize that I will never be able to keep up with the herd of whitetails that had found this magic puddle and were drinking it down every damn night. I knew I couldn't sustain this effort much longer. I was thoroughly sick of worrying about the tadpoles. If there's one thing I know about myself, it is that, once committed to something, I will go down with the ship, chained to the mizzen mast. 

August 15, and the 40 gallons are completely gone only four days later. The drought is so severe that any water source is being swarmed by yellowjackets. I cannot tell you what hell it is to live in a place that has been completely taken over by swarms of yellowjackets. 

Even worse is to have to scoop tadpoles out of a muddy hole while yellowjackets by the hundreds buzz in your ears and land on your arms and back. But the time had come to get them the hell out of this puddle and try something else. By replenishing the puddle again and again I was the picture of Einstein's definition of insanity, which is

Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

When I scooped them out of the mudbath, counting as I put them into fresh cool water, there were an astounding 170 tadpoles, far, far more than the few dozen I thought were still there. So much for the people who darkly predicted that using hose water would kill them. Yeah, I got a little sloppy after a couple months of this. I didn’t have any other water to use. 

Very reluctant to take them in, and not wanting to repeat the overcrowded toad debacle, I divided them into three tubs with about 60 tadpoles in each one. I bought tadpole pellets at the local pet store, and also fed them floating Pond Stix for goldfish. Though I was delighted to find them, I didn't like the tadpole pellets because they sank instantly and I could never tell if they got eaten or not. Tetra Pond Stix are a nice orange color, and they float until they're completely devoured, so it's easy to tell if you're overfeeding. Thumbs up on those! They raised some fine gray tree frogs for me years ago.

If they all changed, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with all those frogs, but I wanted to see if they would metamorphose if they were unstressed, had ample food, and cool, deeper water. 

Next: A Surprise in the Morning