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

The Tadpole Project: Followup

When last we left The Tadpole Project, it was July 10, and the eggs I'd taken from the backyard water garden had just hatched in a superdeluxe fish-free mini water garden I'd set up near the front door. Go here if you'd like to re-read that post.

Not only did we have a mini garden with just-hatched eggs, but the kids and I had gotten down on hands and knees and rescued every last taddie from the rapidly drying driveway puddles. We put those in a separate artificial pool, because they were just getting their hinders and we wanted to track their development separately. There were hundreds and hundreds of these older tadpoles and we just couldn't leave them wriggling under the hot sun.

It's such a wonderful feeling to take a handful of about-to-perish tadpoles and release them into a cool bucket of water. They lift off from the silt that was about to be their grave and flutter through the water, doubtless saying WHEEWW!! or AHHHH! or HALLELUJAH!! or BRRR! or CHICKAWOW WOW!! or whatever a rescued tadpole says.

 The older tads are in the left garden, and the younger ones (from the eggs from our pond) are in the right one.

A !@#@#$# raccoon soon saw to the overpopulation in the little gray pool. In one hellish night, it reduced the tadpoles by about 3/4. After that, I put a heavy grate over each pool every night. Having to do that every evening wasn't much fun, but I couldn't let that happen again. Durn coons. Just little bears, is all they are.


The tadpoles that remained  seemed traumatized, and were extremely skittish and shy for more than a week. I could tell they'd learned from that awful night that dark looming creatures above them mean death. I felt bad for them and set about winning their trust.

Goldfish pellets were just the thing.

I've always wondered what the heck tadpoles are eating in the barren little mud puddles where they grow up. Microorganisms? Algae nobody can see? They grow and mature like magic even in vegetation-free puddles. It's one of life's great mysteries. 

I was worried that there wouldn't be anything to eat in the rainwater I put in the artificial pools, so in addition to some algae-coated plants from the pond and a few lettuce leaves I decided to toss in some goldfish food sticks. These were enthusiastically received. 

Tadpoles are pretty subtle little beings, but note the eye roll on the left-hand tad. Pretty cute, if you know what to look for. Like he's saying, "Hey, Legs, pretty good stuff, huh? Beats the algae Mom left for us."

One extremely charming thing that happened in the bowl of young tadpoles (the ones hatched from eggs) is that they learned to anticipate feeding time. When they saw me come up to the water garden, they would begin swimming energetically along the edge of the pool, all in the same direction, apparently anticipating the moment when I'd drop a few goldfish pellets in and they could eat.

I thought it was pretty keen that they keyed into the routine and seemed happy to see me, coming up to the surface the way fish will. Tadpoles seem so larval, so squishy, so anything but sentient. It was nice to have evidence that they had learned this routine, and knew something, anything at all.

We as a species are always underestimating our fellow creatures. Even those of us who bend over backwards to look for signs of intelligence. I still underestimate them.

The tadpoles grew and thrived. I wasn't sure of their species, since there are several candidates. The two most likely were mountain chorus frog (a local specialty with a raspy, comb-tooth call) and gray tree frog. Given that these eggs were laid late in the season (late June) I was leaning toward gray tree frog.

All would become clear when they finally metamorphosed. I love this shot for showing the dear little sucker mouth this legged tadpole is extending.  He's not gotten his arm buds as yet.

As the tadpoles mature and sprout arms, they absorb their tail. There are so many things about frog metamorphosis that blow my mind, and just one of those things is the ability to absorb an appendage. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could do that? For instance, let's say I'd like to morph into a fashion model. If I had tadpole superpowers, I could just absorb most of my upper thighs and belly flab and head on down to the Ford Agency. I could be one of those beautiful middle-aged ladies in the Viagra ads, the ones that are always strolling around on beaches with their sleeves and pantlegs rolled up, looking satisfied.

Instead I am sitting here wishing I could have some ice cream. But I can't, and won't.

 Yes. Tadpoles. We were talking about tadpoles.

Another mind-blower. These guys go from having a fishlike sucker mouth with a sort of radula (spiny tonguelike scraper) to having a regular frog mouth that opens and closes like yours and mine. So besides the obvious metamorphosis from fishiform to frogiform, the mouth is undergoing profound changes as well.

And naturally, that dictates a diet change. Once they're out of the water, they're no longer scraping surfaces for food; they're catching live prey. 

Could they be tree frogs? They were so tiny...

 They were beginning to emerge, breaking the barrier between water and air. Time would tell.