Our Zoo, Part Two: Mutant Tadpole

When an email went out from a coworker whose husband cleans pools that he had just rescued about a million tadpoles from a pool abandoned during the San Diego fires in Fall 2007, and did anybody want some?

I was like, YEAH!

If we can handle chickens, surely we can take on frogs.

I dutifully brought my tupperware so I could claim my pollywogs from the back of coworker's truck after work one day, and then we became responsible for three To-Be-Frogs. Helpful coworker shared that tadpoles eat hotdogs.

Seriously? That sounded like a joke.

But in fact, you need to see some tadpoles eat lunchmeat. They go to TOWN.

One week later, I learn that I am woefully unable to pick out who's most fit in the Natural Selection Game. I chose Mr. Whopper Head, who has no arms, but who is three times as large as the two other, more froggy-looking guys. One of our biology teachers shared that this would-be-hopper, with no arms (above), is probably a Mutant, and probably Not Going To Make It.

But he's hanging in there, like a two-legged, tail-bearing, no-arms-but-in-denial Big Head Todd (I mean TOAD). We'll see what happens next.

Of the two remaining amphibians, one seems to float around rather listlessly (I am not feeling confident about his viability), and one has two useful legs and arms as well as a tail, and appears to be the Best Bet.

I was wrong about chickens; I may have no Frogsense, either.

Stay tuned.