The tadpoles

So Stephan brought in a coffee can of tadpoles the other day. At first, I was pretty annoyed: he hadn't said a word to me and I was completely unprepared for the little squirmers. Still, I found a mason jar to keep them in (the can was already starting to rust) and I put them out on display for the other students to see.

The problem is, tadpoles need to eat something, and Stephan kept forgetting to bring in pond yuck for them. The poor things were starting to starve: I found a dead one floating on the top of the water. I was going to skim him out when I noticed the other tadpoles eating him. I was kind of grossed out by this, but I left the corpse in the water. Hey, at least it was food.

Stephan finally remembered to bring in some pond grasses yesterday and I put them in the water. The tadpoles perked up by the end of the day, so I guess it was the right thing to do.

Finally, I decided to google up how to take care of them. Turns out, the young tadpoles love to eat the gunk growing on the pond grasses but the ones with little legs are carnivorous (When you put it that way, it sounds almost scary, like that Steven King story about the rain of frogs with razor teeth). So now I have to find tiny bugs to feed to them. The website mentioned aphids, but I'm not quite sure where to find aphids. It's not like Petco sells them.

Anyways, it sounds like it won't be too much of a problem if I can't find aphids. In the event that there is no food, the largest tadpole will consume his brothers. The students will get an education (in a macabre way), and I get at least one frog out of it. Win.