Backyard Exploration- Why I Have Three Toads in My House

2020 has been, without a doubt, a bizarre, stressful year.  Both boys were sick for an entire week before their schools officially went virtual for the remainder of the school year.  It was mid-March and a bit of a novelty for them to be doing school from home.  My younger son's school had lessons and/or classwork in the morning with the rest of the day pretty open, and my older son's teacher carried on "business as usual" for the rest of the school year.  He was busy online or with school work from 8:30 a.m. to around 2:30 p.m.  Whenever he had a break in the school day, we would all go out and walk to get fresh air and exercise, and over the course of a day, we'd walk around 5 miles.  Most days we would stay in our own town, and other times we'd go slightly farther afield.  

Over these past few months, we have seen and photographed (with my modest camera) more animals than I ever thought possible, learned more about native (and some non-native) flora, and have overall just taken the time to explore and enjoy local terrain on foot.

With this blog, I'd like to share our adventures and discoveries with you.  Primarily, the blog sets out to be a photo journal meant to inspire you (and your family) to get outside wherever you might live.  I had several friends ask me to provide a little bit of information about the specific parks we visited, so I include some of that information as well in case you are interested.

Lastly, while I am writing this during the 2020 global pandemic, I really don't want it to come across as a "COVID-Chronicle" other than to make lemonade out of a lot of lemons, I suppose.

But I digress.  Back to the story at hand:

After a particularly long and stressful day of school, some 7 hours of Zooming, my eldest son asked if we could please go look for tadpoles.  How could I say no?  That evening we headed to a small pond where we could hear the frogs croaking as we approached.  A good sign.

He's just a little excited😆, running down the hill, net and bucket in hand.

We circled the pond many times, barely missing capturing actual frogs.  On one of his attempts to net a frog that had jumped back into the pond, he dragged the net back out of the water.  It contained a bunch of debris (decomposing leaves, muck, dirt, etc.) and just as he was about to throw it all back in the water...something caught his eye.  Wait.  What is that?  A fish?  Nope.  It's a tadpole!  Success!  We placed the tadpole, debris, and some more pond water into the container and took it home.  I had one happy boy!

But this tadpole wasn't like any tadpole that I had ever seen.  It was GIGANTIC!  A Bullfrog tadpole.  After doing some research, Bullfrog tadpoles can take 2 years (depending on what stage they are currently in) to become frogs!  We decided that we would observe it at home for a few days and return it to its pond.

This experience, however, did nothing to dissuade him from wanting tadpoles (and really, the frogs they would become).  Undeterred, he set out again and was able to find regular sized tadpoles and brought them back to the house.

Regular sized tadpoles eating some spinach we prepared for them 

Now, there are two routes you can go when keeping tadpoles.  You can just put the tadpoles into a tank with treated tap water.  Or you can take water and debris from wherever you got them (pond/puddle water), and they have the water they came from and a food source ready to go (algae from said pond, for instance).  This made a lot of sense to me, so we just left them in the pond water.  However, as a few days passed and the sediment settled, the water began to smell fetid and a whole array of creatures became visible.  Snails, many, many, little snails.  O.k., not too bad, you say.  Then there was a transparent shrimp-like creature.  Well, he's kind of cool.  But then there were several transparent worm-like creatures against the side of the tank alongside a big, opaque, gelatinous blob. *Shudder*  I was equal parts disgusted and fascinated by them.  The tadpole tank was on a side table in our dining room next to my seat at the table.  I kept staring at them.  Repulsed but not able to look away.  I had a feeling that if I broke out the microscope and placed a drop of that water on a slide, there would be a lot happening that I didn't necessarily want to see.  At this point, I decide to condition some tap water, place our tadpoles in a new tank, return that water to its pond with all of its extra critters with it, and be done with it.

Disgusting worms on the side on the tank

The tadpoles did fine in their new, much more sterile environment.  The following photo(s) were taken while their tank was being prepared, and here you can see them, each at a slightly different stage of development.

Now, about 4-5 weeks later, all of the tadpoles have become (we believe) toads!  My son had a great time researching the toads and how to care for them, and enjoyed putting together their terrarium.  The toads are super small (one could fit on a dime) and are actually very cute.  Currently, they eat extremely small crickets (they are 1/8 of an inch big (pin-head crickets)) that we had to order online.  As they get bigger, they will be able to eat regular crickets, mealworms, worms.  Keep your fingers crossed that at least one of them survives this developmental stage.

I peeled back a little of the moss (they love hiding under there) so you can see one of them.  So cute🐸!

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