Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Re-homing Tadpoles

It's traumatic. No, not for the tadpole, for the humans doing the re-homing.

For the first day she just sat there in the glass. Not even swimming (and usually tadpoles are in constant motion). I thought I'd killed her and was starting to feel very guilty. An anonymous commenter mentioned feeding tadpoles with fish food, so I bought a tub. I dropped a couple of flakes into the glass. For a moment nothing happened. Then she went berserk, swimming all over the shop and bobbing at the flakes of food. She ate a whole flake!! Obviously she was just hungry. I fed her two or three flakes a day and she seemed pretty happy but I was still worried that she might be lonely.

On Saturday I went over to my sister's place and I took the tadpole - now nicknamed Tessa - with me, (in a pudding basin, less chance of spillage). We were both dead worried that her tadpoles might attack Tessa so we proceeded with caution. We scooped a few of the tadpoles from my her pond and put them in the basin with Tessa.

They ignored her (and each other). We dropped a few flakes of food into the basin. They all converged on it - including Tessa. They swam all over snapping up the food, bumping into each other but otherwise unconcerned. By now I had no idea which one was Tessa - they kind of all looked the same. After half-an-hour of watching them carefully we decided that a) they weren't going to attack her, b) in fact they were totally unconcerned and didn't seem territorial at all and c) none of them were half as stressed at being watched as we were at watching them.

So we gently tipped the basin and all its tadpole inhabitants into my sister's pond. They all swam around, bobbing at the surface, nudging the lilies and bumping into the edges in the way that tadpoles do. Tessa was safe and happy. I stood up and said, "Bye, Tessa." And I'm positive my sister wiped a tear or two away (bloody soft eejit!!).

So there you go. Tadpole safely re-homed. And it was an even better day because my sister said I should stay for lunch and she'd made hummus. My sister's home-made hummus is delicious.

Maybe one day I'll meet a frog who remembers me and who turns into a princess or something...

Thanks to everyone who offered advice. And to the person (who shall remain un-named but you know who you are!!) who suggested I make a tadpole sandwich - you sick &^%$. *g* You know perfectly well I'm a vegan and do not consume sentient creatures!! Besides, even if I did eat animals, one tadpole wasn't going to make much of a sandwich.

See you next week, goodnight and may your God/s go with you.

Ze

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