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.

'

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? 

Phoebe is 24!

She's like one of my birds, my ephemeral clients, come to settle in the nest for a summer. It's been a  seemingly endless stream of days that are very much the same. Confined, becalmed, cast out of our former lives into this odd replay of high school summers, we are frozen in time, bewildered but also knowing we are blessed to be together. We are reduced to our elemental selves, back in our old roles. And yet we know it will end; we will all find ways to move back into our old lives. And so it seems to be happening. 

I hear her talking to her laptop, to the people appearing in little squares on its screen, who've hired her to counsel high school students in the mountains of North Carolina. She's found a job--no small feat-- during the pandemic, all those hours of searching finally culminating in this. She's forming bonds, training for her work, expecting to fly the nest next month. We'll have to get her a wardrobe and a car and all the million things it takes to set up a life eight hours from home. It's as sudden as the months since March have been slow, and a bit overwhelming for her mama. In the long view, she is doing what she must as a young adult. She must start her own life, earn her own way, and she's fiercely determined to do it. She was literally kicked off La Gomera in the Canary Islands by her sponsoring organization, Fulbright, when the pandemic hit in mid March. Phoebe had to leave her elementary school students, her fellow teachers, her home, their dog Arafo, and her love, Oscar, with no assurance of when they'd see each other again. But they talk and laugh in the afternoons, so grateful to be connected by the miracle of video calling. Somehow they will be together again, but it's not going to be easy or soon. He waits patiently for that day in the bright Gomeran sun. 

She has handled it all with grace and grit, longing and love. Oscar has responded with incredible strength and positivity. He's back at work and saving money, studying English on DuoLingo and practicing conversation with Phoebe and us every day. I've been awed and humbled by their ability to adjust to their separation. What's their choice? She wants to be happy and independent, to find her own way. So she puts one foot in front of the other, and dreams of somehow getting Oscar over here to start fresh together.  America as we know it now will have to change a lot for that to happen. But it is changing, every day. We are well past ready for that change, for relief, for love and tolerance to conquer chaos, hatred and fear. I don't think we're alone.

Curtis helps. We all fall on him, inhale his woodsy scent, hug him as if our lives depended on it. He has lots of work to do here. He loves being wallered on all day long. He loves his long walks in the orchard and meadow.

Flowers have helped. It's been ages since she's been home for lilac bloom! Oh, to get to experience spring oh so slowly arriving, what a gift that was. Now we pray for the rain that seemed in May as if it would never stop. Prayers were answered today with a torrent! 

The woods have helped. Going into the woods is one of Phoebe's very favorite things to do. As if they knew we needed them, perhaps 50 showy orchis plants threw a party in a little gully in the farthest reaches of our 80 acres back in April.  We hadn't even known they were there, and suddenly they were everywhere.

They came up, among many other places, right in a circle of stones that Bill made back when the kids were little, and we packed up everything it took to cook hamburgers in the snowy woods on the coldest day of the year. He built a fire right there, and cooked our dinner. Oh, what a moment when we found that ring of rocks and realized what it represented: when we'd last been there together.

We turned over the stones, now gone mossy, and remembered. We've been talking about him every single day, keeping him alive in our minds and hearts. Part of being home, of course, is remembering what it was like when he was with us. Phoebe and Liam don't want to forget anything, and neither do I. We miss him, his expert guidance ("Here's what you need to do...") and the rich Thompson family history he could tell. We are a bit adrift without him. But we're finding our way.

She's been tending two new Moultrie game cameras, seeing what walks our paths when we're asleep or otherwise occupied. She looks for the perfect place to situate them, her trusty cur by her side (or ranging far, as he pleases). I love to see her suit up and go off by herself into the woods. She's a Maxi-Me, at 5'9".

There have been many memorable meals, three a day last I counted. We've all done some cooking.

Spinach/feta salmon burgers with asparagus and watermelon on a pretzel bun-- ole!

And on May 9, she brought home a tiny naked song sparrow nestling, found on the side of an asphalt road on a drizzly 37 degree afternoon. It had been discarded by its parents, we think, who couldn't keep it warm or fed, so they took it from the nest and dumped it on the roadside.

Together we raised it up, fed it hundreds of times, saw it grow strong and wild, and then let it go.

  Dustin deserves her own story. What a bird!

From this

to this!! in 45 days!

Phoebe was happy to move her job search outside to better accomodate our recent fledgling's need for food and companionship. Believe it or not, the new WiFi she researched and obtained for us reaches out to the chaise, in the shade of the Japanese maple! (Curtis gets his own chair, though he prefers the chaise and steals it the second Phoebe leaves to get something).

Yes, along with Liam, she's also in-house tech support and advisor. She helped us break free of HughesNet satellite "service," which was a lotta money for practically nothing. I'd been shackled by it for twenty years.  Now, getting Internet through our LTE signal, (Cyberonic Rural Internet Providers) we can do most of the things that normal folks can. Like watch videos, blog,  Facetime and Zoom. Phoebe swooped in just in the nick of time to save us from the Dark Ages. That first couple of months were really tough, when we were all living under one roof just as everything went online. We were still hamstringed by HughesNet and its paltry 15 gig/month "allotment," which invariably ran out within four days. It would take me hours just to upload the photos for a blogpost like this.  Now, it still takes me hours, but not because of a snail-slow connection. :/ Thanks for the rescue, SuperGirl! You've made our lives ever so much easier, faster and better!

Liam says Yay Phoebe! I can stream things now!

We have had some nice walks down Dean's Fork to visit the beavers and hear the wood thrush concerto at dusk. 

One of the unexpected gifts of the summer was all that rain in the spring. It filled up the puddles on the road that leads to our Personal Oil Well. (It's an Appalachian Ohio thing). Phoebe began monitoring them for frog eggs and tadpoles in late May and by the first week of June she was fully engaged, with American toad, mountain chorus frog, spring peeper, and gray tree frogs all going wild out there. When the rains stopped and the broiling heat started, she began toting jugs of rainwater to two puddles. She wasn't going to let a tadpole die on her watch. She enlisted Liam to carry some, and carried lots herself. A pint's a pound the world around; each jug is 5 gallons, so that's a 40-pound load on those shoulders.

By last week, it was getting so dry we were filling one of the puddles twice a day! I drove the tractor and wagon out with four jugs. All told we've probably toted more than 50 gallons of rainwater out to help the tadpoles. We moved those taddies to a more reliable puddle.

It's work, like everything else, to keep puddles full in a bad Ohio drought, but oh, the rewards are so rich. First to grow up and go were the mountain chorus frogs and spring peepers. I'm not pretending to know which one this is. We're just glad it's alive!

 

Rana, the Frog Princess, keeps everything documented, just like her mama.

 

 There were other cool things in that puddle. Here's a predaceous diving beetle, Acilius mediatus, next to a maturing gray treefrog taddy. See its little hinders folded up?  We have found this beetle to be no threat to the tadpoles, though perhaps small ones might be at risk.

 Phoebs has discovered that the gray treefrog taddies get pallid and thin right before they frog out.

As well they should; their mouths are changing from a sucker/scraper/radula thing to one more like ours! Probably hard to eat while your mouth is metamorphosing. Liam wondered aloud if it hurts. Dang good question, Science Chimp Jr.

And then, TaDAAA! you're a treefrog! Green for camo to start. Still with the little buttnub of your tail. Oh man. You are CUTE. 

But for Phoebe they wouldn't be on this earth.

All 250 of them would be a sad handful of dried mud. This was taken just a few days ago, when the smaller puddle finally dried up, despite our efforts. We think the deer and turkeys were drinking it down. We panicked, then quickly moved them to a nearby, deeper puddle that's reliable, and now we're augmenting that one. We have two puddles going; one with 170 tadpoles; the other with maybe 80.

And every day we go out at least twice and see who's popped out of the water. Oh, it's sweet. 

 

 Sweet, like a girl who's turning 24 today.

Who loves her brother, her dog, and her mama

who wears her grandpa Thompson's naughty hat with style

and is growing up just like the child of our red oak grows, straight and tall, strong, slender and true.

Happy birthday, dear Phoebe. Happy birthday to you! This is a little blog to remember your summer by. It has been the greatest gift to have you and Liam here together for the spring and most of the summer. I will never forget it. You are the best, the boldest, the brightest stars in my sky.

If you are thinking of taking Curtis to North Carolina with you, think again.