The Liberation of the Tadpole

Call them what you will. The tadpole or the pollywog. You can even call them “pre-frogs.” They’re all the same thing. Little black round things that swim around in marshes and ponds that eventually turn into frogs. Frogs that eat insects, such as black flies.

It’s very important to have frogs. While they won’t cure all your woes, they will certainly help, which is why it’s quite important to have as many frogs as possible hanging around your property. Every time you hear a “ribbit,” a fly perishes. Well, that’s what I think anyway.

As I was walking around this morning, I discovered two clusters of frog eggs in the pond. This was a good thing to see as I was wondering if there would be any. Here’s a picture of one of the clusters in the pond.

After seeing this, I got all excited and decided to let Laura in on the action. I showed her the eggs in the pond and then we both walked over to a wet area on the other side of the property to see if any eggs were there. This area is drying up fast and if there were eggs, they would need to be moved. If they weren’t, the eggs would dry up and die.

Low and behold, there were eggs in the area. Here is the spot I’m talking about.

And here is one of four clusters of frog eggs.

And here is the frog herself. I didn’t notice her until I put the eggs in the bucket. Perhaps I should move her to the pond as well.

Basically, I moved the eggs to the pond, where they will have enough water to see that they hatch correctly and turn into tadpoles. I put the eggs into a bucket and then slowly let them roll out into a shallow area of the pond. You can see that here.

I can’t wait to see pollywogs swimming around in the pond. Shortly thereafter, we should have a whole mess of frogs jumping around, eating all the black flies.