A Question Of Etiquette

Our frog project is coming along swimmingly now. We have four toad tadpoles, and six frog tadpoles. From the looks of things, the frog tadpoles will be departing soon. One of them even spends a lot of time on land. Fortunately, this project is finally working out as I envisioned - a little biology project for DD.

I did get the hang of the feeding issue. They just wanted the "small fry" food. And Planet Frog makes water changing easy for (lazy) me. There are air holes in the sides, and I just tip the whole thing over the commode so that most of the water comes out the air holes and fill it up with more bottled water when I'm through (yes, they require bottled water, spoiled little things). It doesn't clean out all of the, er, sediment from the bottom, but it does get most of it. Before that, I was trying to catch the little buggers, put them in a cup filled with bottled water, catch them all, dump and rinse everything, and then put everything back. Very annoying, and frankly, I worried about hurting the tadpoles with the net. They are pretty skittish.

Yes, I was patting myself on the back for figuring out that water changing thing. And then I did a tadpole count. Hmmm . . . one of the toad tadpoles missing. They are small - their heads are probably about the size of two flattened peppercorns. But they are too big for the holes. I couldn't figure out the where the heck the thing had gone - until I looked in the commode. And there it was, swimming around as content as can be. Unfortunately, DD saw it too.

Now, my daughter is all about the earth and saving all living things, and she has instituted a catch and release program for us. Should an ant (or any other invader) wander into the house, we must go to great lengths to capture it and makes sure that it gets safely home outside (where the little sh*t can try to come back into house, I'm sure). DD will lecture her little friends if they try to hurt a little bug during recess, because their home is "all the earth," and we are the guests. No one must harm any living thing. Actually, I think that is a fine perspective, though when one of the little buggers comes into my home, I consider it a trespasser and have my own "tough luck" program. Just not in front of DD.

So, against this backdrop, we have been trying to coax the little effer out of the back of hidden area of the bottom of the commode so that we can catch it. Fortunately, we have another bathroom in the house. The problem is that if he does come out, and we try to catch him with a net, he goes back to the hidden area. And the bowl is round, and our net is square, so this has been quite the struggle. I've even tried to backfill the hidden area with TP to block him from going back there as he comes to the front of his makeshift pond, but no luck yet. (Yes, I do have a full life, don't I?)

So here's the etiquette question for the day - how long do I wait to flush?

Comments

[Paz]

ugh, that is tough. I am surprised your back fill plan didn't work.

Can't you feed him there for a few days until he gets bigger and slower and try to catch him again later?

oh no, don't flush him...

[Lorraine]

Hm... four days later, and I'd love to know what happened! I imagine you must have built some kind of little trap-sieve and baited it with - whatever they eat - and the flushig is not a problem?