Tadpoles and Hope

“Hope is an act of defiance against a politics of pessimism and a culture of despair that depends on us not being able to imagine something better than where we are now.”

— Rabbi Sharon Brous

There is a spot across from the nature center where the lake gently laps up to the shore where there is a sandy base with water plants growing along the shallow edges. Caroline had been catching tadpoles days earlier, so I got the pond activity gear out. As I was scoping out the edges of the water and locating where the multitudes of tadpoles were hiding, I saw a couple of young boys walking towards me carrying a small cardboard box. I soon learned they were very familiar with the museum campus as they have been here many times before. They were elated to see the nets and told me loudly that they were going to catch tadpoles to take them home to feed to the “baby snake” they had found in our woods the night before.

Huh? was all I could think. I noticed that they were opening their box to put in tadpoles when I saw the contents of the now very soggy cardboard box. There must have been a dozen leopard frogs in that box, all stepping on each other trying to figure a way out.

“Oh dear, we need to let these go,” I told them.

“But why?” they protested. By this time the older boy had wandered into the water and was up to his neck in the pond like water cooling off from his adventure of collecting all of these frogs.

“Because this is their home! I don’t think you’d like it much if I told you that you could never go home, that this was now your home, would you?” My feeble attempt at reasoning with them. The boy on the shore spilled the box over while all of the frogs eagerly jumped off to the safety of the shore.

The boy in the water looked around and said, “I think I’d like to stay here.” Fair enough I thought, but reasserted my initial statement that these animals need to remain here.

The younger one looked up at me, squinting, “Can we at least take some tadpoles home to feed our snake?”

“No,” I said firmly, “the tadpoles stay in their home too.”

Dejected by this prospect, he asked his older brother to get out of the water and I left them in the hands of their mother.

Dear gawd, is this what the naturalist does all day long, tell kids to not collect living animals to take home? This is going to be a long two days if that’s the case.

Later, other families came and we did some of the activities and we even collected some tadpoles to observe. We’d put them in a shallow dishpan with some lake water in it and observe the different stages that the tadpoles were in. Some had no legs yet, others had just back legs, and some were almost in the frog stage. The squeals of delight as we spill the pan over and say goodbye to the tadpoles was a highlight of the activity.

Then there was a lovely family from China who now reside in Minnesota that came to the museum. Mom, dad, and three lovely daughters. The youngest one was 4 and for whatever reason, needed to communicate with me two inches from my face. As we were doing the butterfly life cycle activity, she seemed to be more mesmerized by my earrings than the butterflies.

Finally, I asked them if they’d like to go outside to see if we could find some tadpoles. All three were thrilled with this idea. I got the dishpan, the nets and put some water in the pan. In no time, they’d scooped up several tadpoles. The little 4 year old squatted in front of the pan with her diminutive hands in the water, shrieking with unabashed joy as the tadpoles swam in between and around her fingers. Most children enjoy looking at the tadpoles, and may poke a finger in to get a tiny feel of them, but this child needed her hands to be completely immersed and one with them.

I was brought back in time to when Sofie was 3 years old and we were living in Japan. I had just taken Kohei to his kindergarten and Sofie and I had come back home. It was one of those moments where I was busy doing the morning chores when I suddenly realized that it was far too quiet and I didn’t know where Sofie was. When I came upon her, she was sitting on the step in the entryway, quietly spinning her hand through the water of the bucket of tadpoles that we had collected from the rice fields. These were much smaller tadpoles that turned into the tiny green frogs that clung to our windows in the rain. Sofie was not just swishing her fingers through the water to touch the tadpoles, she was methodically catching them and then squeezing them until their insides popped out, leaving the shell of the tadpole floating on the top, and the twisted up insides sinking to the bottom of the bucket. She was deep in concentration and hadn’t heard me walk up on her when I gently called her name.

Slightly startled, she looked up at me and said that she was playing with the tadpoles. I told her that I understood that, but she shouldn’t actually touch or squeeze them. Her dark little eyes took on a very concerned look as she said that she thought they liked it. When I pointed out that she was squeezing the insides of them outside, the realization that she was inflicting harm registered and she frantically asked me how we could put the insides back in. I explained to her that we can’t do that, once the insides are on the outside, that’s game over for the tadpole. The wail of grief and sorrow that emerged from her was most pitiful. I held her close until her sobs settled into sniffles and then we took the little bucket and poured the whole thing back into the rice field.

My attention snapped back to the little girl squatting in front of the tadpoles that were as long as her hand, noticing that her grip was becoming tighter and tighter on the little creatures. “Ah,” I told her, “they feel really slippery, don’t they?”

She looked at me and let out one more high pitched screech, her entire body tense with excitement. Her mom and I exchanged knowing looks and she was told in both English and Mandarin that it was time to let these little creatures go back to their homes. We helped her spill the dishpan over and heard one more ear piercing squeal of delight while she jumped up and down releasing the pent up energy in her little body.

Shortly before closing, an East Indian family who came all the way from Georgia stopped in, Mom, dad and 12 year old son. He was almost as tall as me, and probably a third of my weight with funky braces on his teeth. I told him about the challenge to earn a badge and he set off to do those activities. He completed them and I asked if he’d ever caught tadpoles before. He looked at me as if I had three heads, as is the habit of most middle school aged boys when confronted with the opportunity that may make them appear less than cool to their peers. I told him there was another badge in it for him if he’d just scoop up some tadpoles with me. His dad, speaking softly in their native language, encouraged him to go with me while shooing him to the doorway where I waited, net in hand. The lad grunted in agreement and sheepishly followed me out to the lake. We scooped up the tadpoles and marveled at their different states of maturity. He managed to catch a frog and then was able to make the connection from what a tadpole looks like to what a frog actually looks like. To you and me who are familiar with the natural world, this is common knowledge, but to kids who spend the vast majority of their time on a screen, this is an entirely new way of understanding the world. As promised, I gave him two badges for his efforts and he left the nature center in normal adolescent male coolness, but I overheard him say to his dad after exiting the screen door, “That was so cool!” Mission accomplished!

I wring my proverbial hands over and over about our planet and how it is changing and how it seems that we cannot come to some common understanding of how to proceed. What is one to do, what is one to do? And then I am ever so grateful for places like Chik-Wauk that give children and adults the opportunity to get to know their wildlife friends and how we need to be mindful of how our actions affect their well-being. It is a good refresher to be in wildlife’s home, to be reminded that we are the visitors here, not the residents. These young, and old, ones who delight in the surroundings they find themselves in here gives me hope that we will find our way.