tender

the letting-go of the froglets

Ah life. So much. A follow-up to having frog eggs...we had twenty-eight tadpoles hatch in late March, and returned seventeen of them to The Puddle in a mason jar via a really nice friend who lives down the road from The Puddle.  The rest got to live in a large aquarium with gravel and a big rock and fresh water and the regular feedings of frozen lettuce and spinach.  I found mixed recommendations regarding protein, but I will say that they seemed to grow well and big for the most part.  They started morphing into froglets 2 or 3 weeks ago (mid May) and we just released them yesterday: one as the cutest frog I have ever seen, and the rest in varying degrees of tadpolishness. Some had hind legs, some had both sets, and one had no legs yet.  I did not feel confident housing the wee frogs and making sure they got enough insect food, and I was daunted by the idea of having many of them in there hopping about and a little overwhelmed by the size of what I feared might be mosquito larvae, so back they went, with love and well-wishes from their supporters.  What I would do differently:  add more plants, not just the scraps I was able to skim from the nearby creek.  I worried that they didn't have enough oxygen, so I ended up spending long minutes blowing bubbles through a straw into their water. Really. I also had to realize that they were my project, which was actually fine.  When I left no one felt responsible for them, but on the other hand, they were in a spot where they were ogled and checked in on frequently and I think they brought some curiosity and joy into the mix.   I will miss them.