DollsArtCats

Yes, that is a tadpole.. or T.P. on the dropdown menu ..I thought for a second it was a prop; but no, for an extra 50.00 you get the polliwog AND it's blushing. You do have to order a Toad with it, because it needs parental supervision, and you can get the "Singing" head or the regular default head. All this for less than 250.00. The clothes are more for the completist collector--they are cute little hemmed scraps rather than full clothes, but toads look fine naked, IMO. I already have a Mr. Ropuha Toad so I won't be getting this one, though it is tempting to make my own polliwog. Though perhaps Mr. Ropuha is not ready for sharing his box with offspring :D

On Saturday I tested the pond with my new Pond Strips, and the ph was right, so I went to the Aquascape place and buy this year's dozen polliwogs to swim around the pond and, hopefully, grow up to be cute frogs. But when we arrived at the store, the fountain was turned off-- and the sign read "Tuff Sheds", which I had no interest in. Apparently being able to sell things only 5 months of the year wasn't a viable business model for the koi place; but now my options for polliwogs are very limited. So we went to the nursery on the other side of town that sells koi and koi support systems as well as plants; and they had a bucket that contained 3 dead polliwogs and one very lethargic one. Since the teenage sales associate had turned off all the filters and bubblers for the whole row of pollywogs, crayfish and koi, I felt that probably no one should come home with me, since their survivability was dubious. (I did get them to turn the power back on). I still need to check ...

Our polliwogs have legs! I'm taking photos through mesh (we put up bird netting to keep out maple seeds and birds, with the bottom open to let the frogs move about.) So the pictures were not the best, but here is another one: We have 3 true frogs, about the size to fit in your palm, and some mighty polliwogs still swimming in the pond. I'm not sure what causes some to frogify faster than the others, but it's so fun to see the legs develop. Here's the first photo I took with the mesh:

Family has come to visit, so no other projects this weekend--but the polliwogs seem to be doing well--I added two bubblers and now I have a frog with a tail sunning himself on one of the rocks in the pond--a blurry pic here:

It turns out that the Aquascape place was just getting ready for a show yesterday, and today they were open and had polliwogs galore. Actually in Chicago they are called tadpoles, but I know a pollywog when I see one. We brought them back in a plastic bag just as if they were goldfish, got them acclimated to the pond, and then released them. Luckily it was a bit warmer today so I think they were more comfortable than they would have been--the tank they were in was nice and warm and it would have been a shock to go down 15 degrees. But they swam around pretty vigorously for the first couple of hours they were in there, and then seemed to settle down to nap on the gravel or haul themselved up on the side to contemplate evolving. (There were a couple with legs that looked about ready to go). Then Stripey noticed them so I am not sure what will come of that, but maybe she will decide they are too wet to mess with.

So this is pond number three, and instead of koi, we are going to fill it with polliwogs (J says hopefully we will fill it with water ) because at the end of the season the polliwogs, now frogs, can haul themselves out of the pond and I won't have to be there in January in a parka, checking the pond temperature and cleaning the filter. Polliwogs are available at two places locally, and when we went to look at the ones at the Aquascape place they were looking a lot like teenage polliwogs, so we realized we might have to hurry if we wanted the polliwog experience. (The polliwogs there looked a bit surly, too, like teenagers that have been grounded. They did look better than the ones at Wanamaker's, who plainly were past their sell-by date and looking quite poorly. So we are going tomorrow to get some plants and polliwogs from Aquascape. The pond should be de-chlorinated by then--I still have to order the aerator and some pond strips and install the barley bale. J did all the ...