Metamorphosis

This summer we took on quite a few nature projects...beyond just our regular bug catching adventures. The most exciting by far was our venture into raising tadpoles that we caught from a friend of my mom's.

They start as the tiniest little things.

Then they grow the tiniest little legs.

Along the way they provide hours of viewing pleasure. I have to admit that one more than one occasion, my checks on these little guys turned into 15 minutes of just watching them. They were really quite fascinating creatures.

Before we knew it, they began absorbing (yes, they absorb them...they don't just fall off) their tails and growing front legs as well.

After a few of them hopped out of the container and never came back, we decided it best to let them go back into the wild (our local swamp). So Saturday, we packed the frogs and remaining tadpoles plus one extra friend and off we went.

They were really quite cute and we were kind of sad to see them go.

We were quickly distracted from our loss by the sight of this big guy on the hike back to the car. Well, at least until the topic of whether or not alligators eat frogs came up.

Of course when we spotted this, we knew our little guys may or may not make it in their new habitat.

By the time we spotted this guy, it was kind of like, "Frogs? What frogs?"