"We Have To Save the Frogs!!!!"

Yesterday on our way back from a hike up the mountain, Jared and I noticed a puddle full of hundreds of little tadpoles. Knowing that the puddle wouldn't last very long, I came back home to look up what it would take to "save" some of them and give the girls a chance to see the tadpole to frog metamorphosis. I mean, they typically hatch in a pond and are left to fend for themselves, right? Couldn't be too involved. . . . .

Turns out there isn't much to it, but I'm glad I looked it up, because the one major issue is that you can't put them in tap water. From what I read, the chlorine and/or other mineral deposits in tap water would pretty much kill them immediately. So after reading that, I decided we should wait until today, purchase a little plastic tub and hike back up the mountain for some fresh mountain water. We didn't finish running our errands today until it was time to go straight to the girls' school and pick them up, so I didn't have time to check on the puddle before then. I was a little nervous that Macy and Grace would be devastated if everything had dried up, but you can't get much past them, so I had to tell them what I was up to when I headed back to check on our new little friends. Fortunately, we were just in time. When Macy and Grace saw the little tadpoles in their shrinking, muddying, disappearing habitat, they didn't waste a single second on their rescue mission. While I ran to get the tub, they went to work collecting water from a nearby stream to pour into the puddle (both in new shoes). By the time I got back to them (less than 5 minutes later), most of the mud had found its way from the puddle onto the girls, but they were NOT joking around about their mission, and hundreds of little tadpoles were happily swimming again in fresh, cool water. Grace informed me that she was really sorry she got her new shoes so dirty, but it was an emergency! Little does she know that Mommy is smart enough to buy machine washable shoes for her little adventurers. :-D

I guess we'll have to see how many frogs we end up with. Hopefully most of them will make it. Fun stuff!