Two months ago, Anne and I walked up Uvas Creek, searching for
amphibian eggs.
Two months ago, Anne and I walked up Uvas Creek, searching for amphibian eggs. Anne found two jelly-like sacs, each 3/4 inch in diameter, firmly attached to some plant stems. We took them home, along with some gooey green masses which we hoped were frog eggs. We kept one of the jelly sacs, submerged in creek water, in an old mayonnaise jar, and gave all the other potential eggs to other families in Anne’s nature co-op.
The transparent yellow gel of the sac housed about eight tiny cream-colored spheres. I drew sac, eggs, and stem, as well as I could. I am no artist, but part of Anne’s nature co-op is to draw things, and I try to set a good example. Besides, it’s fun.
I resolved to draw the eggs every day — and remembered my resolution four days later, by which time the eggs had elongated into cream-colored mini-bananas. As I drew, one flexed. Children grow so fast … Much chastened, I began to draw daily. The egg sac became more opaque as algae grew on it, but one could still see that the little pre-tadpoles were developing barely discernable eyes and gill slits. One end became rounder; the other, more pointed.
Two weeks after we first brought them home, they started hatching. We could see (and draw) the dark lateral line, as they swam about or dozed on the bottom. We moved them into a 10-gallon aquarium filled with fresh creek water.
We were pretty sure that our tadpoles were salamanders. Our reading indicated that frog eggs are usually laid in masses, and toad eggs in strings. Salamanders and newts lay their eggs in gel packs, usually in water, though some species lay on moist land.
And assuming they were salamanders (or newts – the distinction is vague) we had a problem, for while frog and toad tadpoles are herbivorous, munching happily on algae and fishfood, salamander tadpoles are predacious, requiring live critters to devour. And there are not many live critters for sale small enough for our 1/2 inch long tadpoles.
So every few days for two weeks, Anne and I drove over to Christmas Hill Park to fetch a pail of water: two pails actually, of Uvas Creek water, full of little bitty critters that moved and glittered in the shafts of sunlight. I guess it worked; the tadpoles grew and developed. The seventh and last hatched five days after the first.
They doubled in size, and developed feathery gills, front and then back legs, and personalities. One we nicknamed Swimmy; unlike her siblings, she preferred tootling across the tank to creeping voraciously across the bottom. Another, the last-hatched, only half the size of the first ones hatched, we named Baby.
Some of the others get temporary nicknames: Leopard, for the one who lurks in the algae jungle, Tigger for the one who seems to delight in bouncing on his siblings. But when Leopard crawls out of the algae and Tigger quiets down, they are indistinguishable. Who knows if the next to start bouncing is the same Tigger, or not?
After two weeks of fetching water, we went to Our Pet Store and bought bloodworms. (A supplier drives up to Casa de Fruta every Tuesday morning to meet a guy who brings brine shrimp and bloodworms from farmers in the Central Valley. I love capitalism.) Our tadpoles loved bloodworms.
When we drop a twitchy cut up bit of bloodworm in front of a tadpole, it sniffs, then cautiously approaches, then pounces, sucking up the bloodworm as an ill-mannered child sucks up spaghetti. Sometimes the bloodworm fights to escape, giving the tadpole the appearance of sticking out his tongue, but eventually the tadpole gulps the bloodworm down. Then he crowhops about: perhaps a victory dance, perhaps just in discomfort until his dinner settles.
They have doubled in size since we began feeding them bloodworms, and become more opaque: we can no longer see their internal organs through their translucent skins. This Tuesday we started them on brine shrimp, which they also like, and which we do not need to cut up, not even for Baby.
