Tadpoles

While I was running yesterday, the girls spent the day fishing and canoeing with their dad. They arrived home with a zip lock bag filled with tadpoles. They were bubbling with excitement to dump them into an empty container that Alexa had and watch them grow legs. I had my reservations about this process. To begin with, I knew they would need more water than what they had. Being that I am on city water my tap water contains chlorine. I knew that would kill them. Their dad dropped off a gallon of spring water. I am was not sure about using that as I seem to remember reading that a lot of "spring waters" are really not any better than the tap water. I went ahead and used it though and at this point they seem to be OK. This brought me to my next problem, what do they eat? I mean surely the little buggers need to eat something right?

So I did a little research online. It was recommended that they love lettuce, boiled lettuce. So off we went this morning to City Market. We decided to go with the Vermont Green Organic lettuce. I figured Vermont tadpoles must want Vermont lettuce right? And it seemed best to get the stuff without all the chemicals. I don't want those six legged frogs. The lettuce was also appealing to some small children as well.

We boiled the lettuce for the recommended 10 minutes.

I have never boiled lettuce before and I have to say it stinks. Not as bad as the ever present smell of smoke outside today blowing down from wildfires in Quebec, but bad enough. Next we were to chop it up and spread it on a tray to freeze it.

Apparently we give them a small pinch every couple of days. I also dug out the old fish bowl from the basement and cleaned it up. Left over from Chloe's fish phase when we went through four Betta fish named Otto before giving up. The tadpoles seem happy enough in their new home. We have noticed that the bits of lettuce float around and they seem to swarm it. We are assuming that they are eating it. Although they could be sleeping for all we know.

In case you are wondering this is a catch and release operation. Once we have frogs we will be heading down to the lake to release them. Despite Alexa's attempts to convince me otherwise.