The other day I was traipsing disconsolately through the dusk near the wildlife pond, when the ground started to move. The leaf litter all around my feet heaved and crept like a scene out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Here is the pond on a sunny day such as today:
As the ground moved, I bent over and peered at it, then prodded at the leaf litter with my fingers. It was clammy.
“Ribbit”, it said.
It was alive with frogs, hopping and scrambling away from me. They were full-grown adults, and they were all over the field and the lane. I remembered that I had released a large bucketful of frogspawn into this pond a year ago, because Bunty’s mother’s teacup-sized pond was so choked up with the stuff that it had pushed out most of the water. The owners of the wildlife pond had shortly thereafter added a shoal of carp to their pond, so I had assumed none of my frogspawn would have survived. I was wrong!
I gathered up several handfuls of frogs and carried them gently to the wildlife pond’s edge. I don’t know whether they were looking for water, but it somehow felt like the thing to do – the pond can’t be seen from ground level, and it is reached over the top of a high bank formed from surplus soil when it was dug out.
I returned this morning, to see if they were still there so that I could photograph them. The leaf litter was stirred only by occasional breezes, and the frogs were nowhere to be seen. I did, however, find watersnails.
I found stubbly little Lymnaea trunculata, and long and elegant Lymnaea stagnalis. One L. stagnalis floated lazily past on its back. At first I thought it was dead, but when I touched its foot with a piece of reed, it curled its foot around it. Lymnaea have lungs and can breathe air, so perhaps it was taking an extra dose of oxygen.
I do love dabbling in ponds. I pottered around the edge, finding diving beetles and water spiders and then, suddenly, I noticed it: drifting among the weeds like the lovechild of a cloud and a coral reef, a conglomeration of frogspawn.
That's "frog eggs" to you Americans
It was close to the area where I had placed my handfuls of frogs. I therefore take full credit. These are my spawn. I made them.
Based in Scotland, my boyfriend Bunty and I open our door to unwanted pets and try to enrich their lives with freedom and wonder. The upshot is that we are greeted every morning by butts in our faces, ripped wallpaper, and an ear-splitting cacophony of demands for breakfast. That means they love us, right?
So peaceful and lovely.
Always a happy place to visit!
Glad you enjoyed !
Still no sign of any spawn in my pond. The frogs, despite flolloping around in (at least 8) couples, are ten days late now compared with previous years. Of course, this is the first year all my weed has died off; and the replacement stuff I bought hasn’t grown much yet. So, if the spawn ended up on the bottom rather than sitting on weed mats, I wouldn’t see it – as the mass die off has made the water more opaque than normal too.
The wretched website turned a number eight and a close bracket into a smiley. I need a suppress-all-smileys option for the comment box.
I think I just switched the emoticons off. Testing: 8)
Drat.
Ah. I forgot to press “save changes”. :o)
Update: I’ve just found some spawn! A very small amount has been tucked behind the rubber flap in one corner of the pond where the frogs like to lurk (and hence will climb all over it). I don’t know if it was an intentional laying choice or premature ejaculation due to being squeezed by another frog or three. However, it looks as though a bunch of eggs never made it as far as the water to expand properly and are glued much higher up – ie probably drying out and dying if they even got fertilised in the first place. :-/
I missed this comment before. Did they hatch out okay in the end?
Snailrind, frog-mother. Like earth-mother, but greener.
Happiness.
Perhaps because I’ve never seen the movie, and because I seem to hear it said fairly often, “Like something out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” seems like the universal simile to me.
Anything you want to add slightly creepy colour to, you can use this term and presto, like a sprinkle of bacon bits bringing life to an otherwise drab salad, your previously drab description has been rendered creepy!
Seems like a very lively area, yet so peaceful.
That sums it up pretty well. Thanks for dropping by! :)