Remember Those Tadpoles?

Remember how we saved a bunch of tadpoles and took them home? Well, weeks and weeks later, we finally have at least one teeny weeny frog. Yesterday we also had one, which I picked up and put down a couple of times, only to learn that wittle bitty fwoggies do not like that. It died minutes later. This morning, yet another wee polliwog became a frog--apparently ingesting his tail overnight. I feel terrible about the one I man-handled and have decided it's definitely time to release all of them--I don't have the skills or equipment to care for these incy wincy amphibians any longer. 

TA-DAAPOOOLE!

Of the original flock cloud, only around eight remain*. All the rest went in one of two major die-offs. I don't know what happened the first time, which was about two weeks after we'd first installed the tadpoles in our home. Suddenly the water was a murky mess and half the critters were floating around looking grey and hollow. The second massive die-off was entirely my fault: I had run out of boiled lettuce and cheated by dropping in just a tiny bit of, um, bread. Fail.

Almost frogs (or toads?)

For anyone who cares to know, here are my major tips and tricks for the successful raising of tadpoles. Assuming you consider eight almost-frogs out of 30 tadpoles a "success": 

1. Change their water every few days. The new water should be de-chlorinated. I put tap water in a big glass jar in the sunshine for a few days, which seemed to work. Sometimes I also added a little fresh tap water, but I guess in Vienna the chlorine levels are so low it didn't hurt anybody. I reckon in many other cities tap water would basically be an amphibian death sentence. 

Also, not changing the water is very bad--I'm pretty sure that's what was behind mass extinction one. The water should not get even a little bit cloudy - not at ALL. You'd think that was fine, since tadpoles live in filthy puddles, but it is not. I'm sorry, duders. I drowned you in your own goop. 

How do you go about changing tadpole water? What you do not do is try to individually spoon the tadpoles out, because you have better things to do, like change your actual human tadpole and make lunch or whatever. What you do is take out all your decorative rocks, pour the whole mess of water and tadpoles through a fine sieve (poop<"fine"<tadpoles), and dump the tadpoles into a bowl of clean, de-chlorinated water. Tap tap tap your sieve! Those suckers can be sticky. Put your rocks and your tadpoles back in their aquarium, i.e. their big glass tupperware with no lid, which is what we used. Add water as necessary. 

How the Noodle looks to a tadpole.

2. Direct sunshine murders frogspawn. We put our container on a table next to a big plant whose (non-toxic) leaves sort of gave it some shade, and anyway it was not in direct sunlight. Also, somewhere on the internet it says that mint and some other herbs and plants are toxic for fwoggy woggies, so beware. I'd be more specific but I can't really remember and also there is Google. 

3. Boiled lettuce. Feed them lettuce boiled down into nothingness, which you then chop. You can freeze little chunks in an ice-cube tray (a whole ice-cube would be, like, five times too much for one feeding of 20 tadpoles, though) and drop them in every two or three days. Do not feed them bread. I'm sorry, little guys. I didn't know. 

4. Don't touch them. They die. I'M SO SORRY, little frog from yesterday. 

Have fun growing froglets! 

----

*A flock? A pride? A murder? A group? According to the internet, the author of one book about clusters of animals says it's cloud, but scientists use school or shoal. Let's go with cloud. 

Parenting Fail: Part 1/529224315

On Monday I took young Nava to the doctor because she had been coughing a little on the weekend and her eyes had been red and runny. This was the first time she's ever been even a little sick and I wanted someone else to tell me that she's fine. As is always the way, her symptoms evaporated completely by the time we were in the doctor's waiting room. But I'm stubborn and anyway I had nothing else scheduled, so having gotten this far I decided there was no way we were leaving without seeing the doctor about something.

Not-sick Nava. Because she can't say no,
she has to wear elephant ears and bunny boots.
This is how we incentivize learning to talk. 

Happily (I guess), there was something! The infant had developed a pretty grody rash behind her ears. It was flaky and nasty. Now, my ignorance is a silky and voluptuous creature whom I hate to discourage, so I hadn't done any research or even much thinking about this rash and had simply put it down to "some kind of cradle cap or something". Despite knowing better, I also had a slight nagging worry that it was a symptom of psoriasis, my own familiar skin condition, which I obviously hope my daughter hasn't inherited. 

And so we waited at the doctor's office. One patient was a teeny weeny baby that must have been less than a week old. His (her?) parents looked exhausted and held their little bundle in that awkward super-newborn way where you're just trying to prevent the kid's head from dribbling down your front like a wet squid. It made me realize how much old Nava has solidified in the last three-and-a-half months. 

There was also a cute toddler girl who was tinkering with toys while her mother and grandmother were intently focused on some kind of cell phone game. At one point the girl dragged this mini rocking horse out from under a table to play with, but she only pulled it out halfway, so that once she got on she inevitably smacked the back of her head against the countertop. 

The girl's mom leapt up and over me in time to prevent her child from bumping her head a second time. Then she shot me the same look that you give a turd that has failed to flush. I was sitting closer to the rocking horse than the kid's mom, and, you know, I wasn't playing with my phone, so I guess it was my job to intervene and save her toddler's skull, but I was holding a baby and also I didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. The kid didn't even notice she had banged her head. Whatever. So this other mom gave me the squint and I tried to act like a dignified turd who has better shit to worry about, so to speak. 

After that tiresome interlude in the waiting room, which I feel like doctors (and perhaps bloggers) insist on just to make a little more mountain out of what would otherwise be a negligible tad of molehill, we finally got in to the doctor. 

He instantly dismissed the suggestion that Nava was sick, so as planned I brought up the rash behind her ears. 

"Uh-oh, a rash?," said the doctor, who looks nothing like Santa but sort of talks like him sometimes. "Well, we had better take a look!" He carefully turned the baby's head from side to side to inspect behind each thumb-sized ear. 

He looked at me. "That is just dirt." 

"Oh," I said, deflated. "Just dirt?" 

Oh. 

"Yes, dirt," he said, slowly, as if explaining to a turd that it is not supposed to stick around but rather should swim away with its brothers. "One does actually have to clean the babies. I would suggest treating the ears with a washcloth and soap, and later applying almond oil. That should do it."  

Flushed, I left.