Tadpoles seem to be a large part of pool opening day each year. Before anyone really grosses out, just understand that the tadpoles are not actually in the swimming pool, just swimming in the rain water that collects on the cover. The problem every year is what to do with 1,000 swimming tadpoles. My husband's manly, and somewhat calloused idea, is to dump them on the ground and let them die, but that has never flown too well with the children and I. Generally we bucket load after load of them out and put them in the old duckling swimming pools under the nearby shade tree. This year JD hosed the cover, flushing the tadpoles into a small pump that pumped the tadpoles and water directly into the baby pools.
I'm not going to lie to any other frog lovers out there, they didn't all make it, but we made a huge contribution to the overall future frog population around our house.
At one point, Julia realized that there were many stuck in the leaf net and pulled them out as well. Sometimes she works so well and hard that you'd think she is older than her four years - other times, not hard to believe she's four!
In the end, the pools were so full and so heavy that we couldn't slide them over to the trees. If it starts getting really hot again, I'm going to have to rig up some beautiful saw-horse/tarp display to provide them some shade.
We also have a hot-tub in the backyard (that needs work and we've never used) that is full of tad-poles. I'm not even going to go there, they can just stay!
In an effort to show what a caring and sensitive guy my husband is, he came up with an idea of how to pump and strain the tad-poles next year so that we won't lose as many. I may have to show him this post to remind him next year if he's in a hurry, but it was all his idea!
i'm sorry...but i'm with JD on this one. hose the cover off & let the tadpoles fend for themselves! we go through this every year with our little fish pond. yuck!!!
ReplyDeleteI guess I fall in the middle. This is our first year with a pool and we noticed the little guys about a week or two before we were going to open the pool. So, we are now raising about 50 in a rubbermaid container, but we did not try to save them all.
ReplyDeleteHow creative!! Glad you got to save some, and not have them intruding on your cooling down, fun time in the pool!! Had to make sure I stopped by to apologize for not stopping by as often as I would like. So glad to see your lovely family this way. The kids are getting so big!! Blessings to each of you!! :-)
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