Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Final Frog!


There's always one - a slow one that's miles behind all the rest. This wee frog was released tonight, the last of our batch. All the others (49) went about 2 weeks ago, at which stage this one was still just a big blob of a tadpole with back legs, a big tail, but no sign of any frog characteristics and not even any wee stubs for front legs.

We thought that he must be a mutant, one that would have died already if he'd been in the wild, and we didn't hold out much hope for him. So for the past two weeks he's been swimming about all by himself, nibbling on wee bits of raw fish.

Then all of a sudden he started to change, front legs and eyes emerging, tail shrinking, a late developer making up for lost time. A week ago he was still a tadpole with legs, but here he is earlier tonight sitting on my hand, on his way to the corner of the field where all of the rest were let loose.

So there are (hopefully) 50 wee froglets leaping about at Ballyfrench, the first generation of a new breed.

1 comments:

Stephen Jamison said...

Hi Mark your blog about the frog reminded me of the wee verse about the story of evolution ...

I once was a tadpole beginning to begin,
Then I became a frog, with my tail tucked in.
Then a monkey up a Banyan tree,
And now a Professor with a PHD!

Much rather have the simple but powerful words of Genesis 1v1.

It's hard tae road a boady tae somewhur he haes niver been.
Stephen J.