For three days, there has been a “running of the tadpoles” occurring at one fifteen-foot span of water along the shoreline. On the first day, it was like a swarm – a dark cloud of them covering an area the size of a trash can lid, as the image below shows.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here before, but the first pet I had was a tadpole. When I was young, neighborhood friends gave me a tadpole to take home from their fish bowl of tadpoles. However, the parents didn’t equip me with a proper receptacle and my little four year old hand carried the tadpole in a tiny pool of water in my cupped palm.
It was a short walk, about forty yards, and I walked ever so carefully, attentive to the little life-form in my hand. By the time I came through the back door, and showed my mother the drying tadpole, it was probably too late. But my mother made every effort to hurry it into water. I watched, but it didn’t squiggle as it had in my friend’s fish bowl. I was heartbroken and disappointed.
But I can still remember what it felt like as I carried it and cared for it and felt its life in connection with mine.
Tadpoles
SilverLining 