This summer, we’ve been going through a stretch of unseasonably cold and rainy weather here in New England. All the wet and cold is certainly not good for my tomatoes, or for people who are on vacation. Everyone is down in the dumps because of the weather. Everyone that is except for pollywogs!
And that is the problem. My elderly dad has a above ground pool, and we didn’t get it prepared for an early start this year precisely because of the poor weather. But we didn’t realize that just because we weren’t using the pool someone else might have different ideas.
And that someone else, happened to be a tree frogs who spawned in still waters of the swimming pool. In all the years my family had the pool, we never had polliwogs take up residence. We can only guess it is due to the weather related late start we had opening the pool up. And frankly, we were astonished: we didn’t notice the predicament until there were thousands of polliwogs in various stages of gestation swimming all about the pool.
They’re really are quite remarkable. Some look like little blobs with tails. Some of them are sprouting legs. It’s kind of relaxing to stand at the edge of the pool and watch the polliwogs come up and take a gulp of air and then go back to the bottom. Be that as it may, we need to use the pool at some point so we have to move our little friends along.
It’s a tricky and labor intensive endeavor to catch and release them. We succeeded in relocating several hundred, but at some point we’re probably going to have to at some point just chlorinate and start the pool.
But then again, all this cool, rainy weather is actually great for catching pollywogs!
copyright 2021 Christopher Donahue
