I Know that Somehow I Will be Held Personally Responsible for This

Sky got tadpoles.

It was inevitable.

After all, we'd given him a Dagobah Frog Habitat for his birthday (how could we not?) at the end of last year, so it was only a matter of time before the tadpoles.

Sky pulled out the habitat last Sunday and helpfully reminded me that I promised to get a tadpole once the weather turned warm. Since we bought the habitat on super-duper clearance back in June, the mail-in coupon for our free tadpole had expired. By a year. So, this Memorial Day, after a morning at the playground, we went to the pet store and spent $14.38 for two tadpoles, water conditioner, and some fish food. I don't know a thing about animals. But how hard could it be to pick up a couple of tadpoles?

When Ren saw them, he asked two pretty important questions:

"Good lord, how old are those tadpoles?"

and

"What kind of ginormous frogs will they turn into?"

Why, I'm glad you asked that, Ren. They're bull frog tadpoles. And, now that you mention it, Sweetie, they do seem pretty monstrous.

Still, I kind of wished he hadn't asked those questions in front of Sky, because now Sky is worried that the frogs will not fit in Yoda's cave, or worse, that they will go inside and then have a phenomenal growth spurt that makes it impossible for them to get out ever again. Meanwhile, now I'm going to have nightmares about giant frogs suffocating me in my sleep. *Shiver*.

Anyway, since I knew that somehow these tad-frog-miniature-godzilla wannabees would become my responsibility, I set to work acclimating our new friends to their Dagobah swamp by helping them adjust to the new water temperature and making sure their habitat was neither too sunny nor too cold. As I was obsessing about all of this, Ren kindly reminded me (and by "kindly reminded" I mean, "scoffed") that they're just frogs and to quit worrying already.

Meanwhile, Sky insisted the tadpoles be put in his room on his desk. I'm pretty sure we won't be able to keep his desk a comfortable 75-80 degrees for the tadpoles, but we will be able to keep them generally out of my sight (yay!) AND when they do get large enough to break out of their habitat and suffocate sleeping humans, they are far more likely to go for the closer targets of Sky and Pink P. My mom sense almost always alerts me when one of my kids is in trouble, so surely, in case of bull-frog attack, I would hear the scuffle and jump to the rescue. Yes, the tadpoles belong on Sky's desk. Problem solved.





Only, I'm pretty sure the tadpoles won't make it to frog-hood. This morning I went in to find their plastic container surrounded by "Where's Waldo" books. Those books give me a headache. I can't imagine what they do to tiny tadpole brains. And a couple of hours later, I went in to find that Sky had placed them on top of a light-up ABC toy. Not only was the habitat sitting on the toy totally catawampus, but it was also directly on top of an object that had music playing at full volume while lights flashed vigorously and randomly. I remember reading studies in my undergrad neuropsychology class about how caged rats that were shocked at random developed deadly cancer at a much higher rate than their counterparts who were shocked only when they failed to perform a specific action.

As Sky obediently returned the tadpole habitat to the corner of his desk, water sloshing inside, I tried to explain to him about those doomed rats.

"Buddy, you can't keep changing their environment. You're going to stress them out."

"I thought they'd like disco lights in their cage."

"Maybe, but you can't keep moving them around."

"Why?"

"Because whenever you move the cage, it's like they're having an earthquake and tsunami all at once."

"O~oh."