I’m interrupting my exploration of tadpole death for this exciting news about tadpole LIFE:
One of the tads in the Tiny Tank appears to now have fully developed legs AND arms! It is swimming around maniacally, as if ready to roll! Like a teenager so so ready to leave home, but can’t because he isn’t done with school and hasn’t learned to drive.
In this case, the little squirt is still breathing exclusively under water, and still has its tail. The tail will be gradually absorbed in lieu of food as the new froglet leaves the vegetarian life behind and learns to catch bugs. Bugs will be its sole source of food from that point on — and dead ones won’t do. The buglets must be alive, and they must be small.
This presents a problem – I live in a bug-free home. Even the cat doesn’t have any fleas to offer, and if there were bugs, they’d have to be convinced to hover over the surface of this one body of water in this one corner of the house.
Meanwhile, the baby needs a ramp to climb out on so it can do its froglet thing – which it can only do when it figures out how to breathe air.
Linda cut me a length of molding, making a perfect ramp that is now floating on the surface. The slant of it will meet the froglet at water level, facilitating its first exit. I have a larger version of this in the Big Tank outdoors, and in previous years it has been well used for this purpose by generations of healthy froglets. (But sadly, not this year. Back to that later.)