But before all that....
We have a kidney-shaped swimming pool in the back yard. The woman who owned this house before last August only visited for the occasional weekend - and she never took care of the pool. All the chlorine has gone out of it and there's algae growing - the cover has a tear and is covered with water and leaves and pond-gunk. I don't even call it a pool, I call it the pond.
Local wildlife has reached the same conclusion. There are often mallards swimming in the pool. The couple I've named Artur and Sophelia. There's also a solitary male I've yet to name. I keep hoping he'll meet a nice female to settle down with, and likewise earn a name by contributing to the Great Circle of the Black Market. What? Like I'd say life? I'm hoping Artur and Sophelia will decide to nest in the woods surrounding the backyard. Then I can steal the eggs and incubate them in my electric blanket in my closet (so the cat's don't eat them). Then, when they hatch, I'll be the one they imprint on & I can walk around the house with a trail of ducklings following behind like those old wooden toys before batteries were invented. I can dress in an extravagant black outfit with a wonderfully big black hat and nuzzle them against my cheeks like I'm in Tuscany.
Since they'll be imprinted on me, I can train them & subsequently sell them to Hollywood for enough money to clean the baby duck crap off the hardwood floors after they're gone. And if any of them are too stupid to learn tricks, Gram's been wanting to make duck a'lorange.
Gram doesn't like the ducks. When I tell her the male is wagging his tail, she says it means he's pooping in her pool. I always thought it meant they were happy. I told her I didn't see it poo, but I don't know if duck poo floats or sinks.
Today, I laid in the sun next to the pool and watched the water skippers flee in the other direction. That's when I saw millions upon billions upon some other obscenely great number of tadpoles. The pool is infested with them. I laid on my belly and watched them race around like little black sperm with no purpose since there wasn't an egg in sight. A frog came to sit at the edge of the pool liner and watch me with frightened interest.
I asked Gram if I could keep some of the tadpoles in a mason jar on the back porch and watch them grow legs. She didn't seem enthralled with the idea, but didn't refuse, so I got the net (we have a small fish pond & a fish net) & went to catch me some sperm.
I managed to catch the frog! He was brilliant shades of forest green above his front legs, but below was a muddy brown. I yelled for Gram to come see, but the phone rang and when she said it was for me I turned to look and he jumped out of my grasp.
It was the call from work I'd been waiting for. Not that I wanted them to call, I just knew they would. Bonnie said, "Tell me you weren't taking an afternoon nap."
"No. I was catchin frogs."
I explained the situation to Bonnie & she said she hoped it spit on me. Gram was listening in & having a fit thinking the frog was in her house. I told them both it was back in the pool and thanks to them I probably wouldn't be able to catch it again today.
Bonnie asked me if I could work a longer shift tomorrow. I said, "I let the frog get away for this?"
I managed to catch 5 tadpoles. They look like black sperm with little beady eyes that shine white if the light hits them right. I got a big one, a little one, a fast one, an adventurous one, and one that just follows the others around looking for something worth anything.
Their names are: Spermicide, Condom, Diaphragm, Hysterectomy, and Squishy. Little Nicky calls tadpoles "Nemos," so the entire time I was laying on the edge of the pool picking my sperm, I kept thinking, "I shall call him Squishy. And he shall be mine. And he shall be my Squishy."
At one point, I saw a HUGE tadpole swim up from the muck. I shrieked to Gram, but it swam right back down into the shadows. It was the side of a two-year-old's fist! I don't know if it forgot to grow legs or what, but I didn't hink tadpoles were ever that big.
Looked like this one - I'm looking for info in it. If you look closely, there's a brown tadpole near the middle of this picture.
4 comments:
"There's also a solitary male I've yet to name."
I don't even want to know how you know the sex of this poor water fowl.
It's a MALARD!!!! The females are brown and the males have green heads - and not THOSE heads....sicko.
Eeoow, eeoow, eeoow...I'd die if I saw a tadpole that big anywhere near me. We have a pool and thank goodness, we don't get a lot of tadpoles in it. Most of them get sucked up into the filter once summer hits.
Good luck with the pond! :)
CJ - the tadpoles will be gone by next week because a man is coming to put chemicals into the pool to clean it out so we can start using it.
I'm trying to find people who want tadpoles so I can save them from an untimely demise. Want some for your kids? They can watch them grow appendages & then you can fry and eat the appendages. (I said "untimely" - not death in general) (sorry, that's the evilness in me speaking)
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