This being a beautiful mild Autumn day, I decided to clear up the garden a little. Not too much, mind – I don’t want to disturb any of the creatures that have made their home there. This is indeed the problem in the Little Garden; it is extremely popular with any number of small creatures, who take exception to just about anything I ever do there, so I must be careful. I just tidied up a little, raked some leaves, guided a particularly wayward pyracanthia back to more orthodox growth habits, and fished some leaves out of the pond. That’s when I had a major shock!
Most of what goes on in the pond is invisible, on account of the black liner and floating vegetation. It is unsatisfactory for me, but the pond dwellers prefer it that way and so I acquiesce. However, partly to satisfy my desire to observe the pond creatures, partly to protect the pump from excessive mud, I installed an old wash bowl in one area of the pond. It stands on a few bricks, and the pump is inside of the bowl. Its rim is usually a few inches below the water surface. Since the bowl is light coloured, I can observe any creature that swims around in it. The bowl also functions as a nursery for the tapoles; when they are quite tiny, I keep the water level at just below the rim of the bowl, thereby keeping out predators. When the taddies grow too big to be eaten by their fairly small predators, I allow the water level to rise so that they can colonise the rest of the pond. However, the bowl continues to be popular with them, partly I suppose because the pump oxygenates the water, partly perhaps for nostalgic reasons. Also, whenever I feed them little titbits – usually frozen water fleas – I put them into this bowl.
This bowl had become a little overgrown of late. When the taddies grow limbs they become more skittish, and I try to leave the pond as undisturbed as possible until the froglets have left the pond. Then I went on my long holiday, after which I suffered from a cold so spent little time outside. So it had been quite a while since I had attended to the pond. It was fairly choked with leaves, and had an overabundance of oxygenating plants. I pulled out a few handfuls, and took out the bowl for cleaning. When I returned it to the pond, I was once again able to observe its denizens.
And would you believe it, the bowl quickly became populated with tadpoles! In mid-November! Any self respecting tadpole turns into a froglet and leaves the pond latest by August, at least that’s what they had done in all previous years. One or two, it is true, lingered on and refused to grow up – the technical term for this is Peter Pan Tadpoles – but I had never had an entire generation adopt this course of action.
What oh what have I done wrong? In the middle of last year my neighbout had finally cut down a huge tree which shaded the pond, so I had expected the taddies to develop quickly and leave home in double-quick time. I had fed them water fleas, turned on the pump in hot weather, re-stocked with oxygenating plants, and even added a few more marginals. I had also introduced a few sticklebacks into the pond, to keep down the mosquito larvae after the tadpoles had left the pond, and long agonised over this decision, worrying that they would eat all the smaller taddies.
Stupid idiot me! Far from having been eaten by the sticklebacks and whatever other predators haunted the pond, the taddies had become so comfortable they decided to stay for good. Not for them the exhausting business of changing from tadpole into froglet, and of braving blackbirds and thrushes waiting to devour them when they emerged from the pond on a moist Summer evening for the first time. No, they had collectively decided to put up a finger to evolution and remain as tadpoles in their nice safe pond, living happily ever after. I suppose I can’t exactly blame them, but all the same I am appalled. Who is going to eat all the slugs and snails and flies and mosquitoes in the garden if there are no more frogs?
I feel like a mother whose children refuse to move out of the parental home, preferring its convenience and full service environment to living on their own. How on earth does one evict reluctant tadpoles from a garden pond? And what is going to happen in spring, when the next generation of tadpoles emerge from their eggs? Will the older tadpoles eat their smaller newborn siblings? Will they suddenly hurry up and leave the pond before their siblings grow up and taunt them with their ‘mutton-dressed-as-lamb’ status? Personally I blame the mother!
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| The culprit lurking near the scene of her crime ... |
