Barking Tree Frog Tadpole Rescue

The fruit of the Frogapalooza evening down at the pond two weeks ago.

Unfortunately, the pond did not get the message about holding water until the tadpoles metamorphosed into tiny froglings.

In the last week, it has shrunk to two puddles of only a few inches in depth.
The water sits above a gooshy black organic ooze layer.

Warm water holds less oxygen than cool water and these shrinking puddles are loaded with thousands of tadpoles.

It's a recipe for a ca-tad-strophy.

Historically, this pipe channeled water from my gutters to the pond.

I took the gutters off last summer, but the pipe system I installed is still there.
This morning I hooked a hose into the system back at the house and sent water flowing down to the pond.

After the water was flowing, I scraped a shallow channel to direct water from the pipe to the tadpole puddles.

I also scraped a shallow canal to reconnect the two puddles.

As the cool, 72 degree well water entered the puddles, the tadpoles gravitated toward it and clumped up at the inlets.

It is raining in the area now, the drought is over, but the rain has skipped PFHQ for a week or so and the heat of summer was threatening to dry up these puddles. It took me about 15 minutes to scrape the "stream bed" and turn back the clock on these puddles.

Amphibians need every little hand up we can give them, not just here, but around the planet.

All I have to do is monitor the situation now and run a little water when the puddles shrink too much.

Most tadpoles metamorphose pretty quickly, so these guys just might make it.

I made a little video for you so you could see the whole operation in motion.