A Tadpole, Polliwog and Polwig- Final Chapter

This is the final installment of this years tadpole saga.  There have been some heartbreaks, some serious back stabbing, maybe even murder.  So if you have missed any of it you can always refer to Part I and Part II.  In this episode however we needed to deal with a major intervention.

You see the tadpoles where slowly developing their back legs.  I mean really slowly.  The biggest one took about 3 weeks from the moment the back legs looked like, well quite frankly poop to them resembling back flappers.  Once however the hind legs came within hours (definetly less then 24) the front legs appeared and the tail began to dissapear.

I really do not know anything about amphibians but it seems like the front legs were just hiding underneath the belly flap ready to come out when the back ones were developed.  Once that happened entered me at some wee hour of the night finding the almost frog speciment floating lifeless on top of the container.

I knew I had to act quickly so I built this contraption out of an empty milk box (we have a lot of those around) and figured that the frog can make a better choice of water or land then I would.  It seemed as if the frog wanted nothing to do with water and stayed on “land” (cardboard really) for the rest of the night.

In the morning I introduced the kids to their new friend no longer a tadpole

and actually let them hold it

my daughter was enamoured my son not so much

We let the frog out near the creek where we brought its water from and said our goodbyes