martinzoo

Yesterday I spent four hours cleaning GB’s room. He has OCD issues, so these things have to be done while he is not around. His room is never messy, but it wasn’t clean, if you know what I mean. He likes everything to go back to the place where it belongs, but it doesn’t matter to him if there are crumbs or fluffy bits on his carpet. So I decided that it was time for a top-to-bottom cleaning. Plus, I wanted to add a shelf for his books. You can’t add, or take away anything from GB’s room without a darned good reason. So, I told him that the cheapy plastic furniture was going to have to go because the books were warping the tops of the little dressers. And Walmart doesn’t make those dressers anymore.

Well, even though it’s pretty cheap stuff, GB likes it. He’s used to it, and likes the colors and the comfort of old junk. So he decided that it would be ok for me to put up ONE shelf. I put it over his skink and hamster cages. And I think it looks nice. It actually adds a focus to the animal area.

When I clean his room, I clean out the drawers and wash the plastic dressers and move them OUT of the room. Then the little boxes under his table get cleaned out and moved out of the room. By the time I’ve cleaned it all, all I have left to do is the baseboards and the carpet. Then I move it all back in; in exactly the same places. GB cannot stand to watch the process. He hates to see the mess I make of his room while I’m cleaning it…..LOL!

So, here is the finished product:

Aquagirl would say that it looks exactly the same as before, but GB and I know the difference. It’s much cleaner. And hopefully he won’t get bit by spiders anymore. I didn’t see any spider webs or spiders, but he gets bit at night, so I’m hoping the thorough cleaning will help with that issue. The kid is a magnet for bugs, I tell you!

After dinner, we were put-putting around the yard and GB came over to me all excited about his latest find. Remember about a year and a half ago, when GB had to let his toad go back to nature for the winter? Well, last evening GB was convinced that he had found Slippery. It wasn’t him, and GB does concede this, but he wants to believe that it is either Slippery or one of his offspring. Guess where we found him?

This is the fountain that my mother gave me for my birthday back in September. I didn’t put it up until a few weeks ago. But I guess now it has a new resident. I’ll tell you, if I was a toad, this would be paradise! It’s kinda hard to tell between him and the rocks. Finding him absolutely made GB’s night, though.  Little boys are so cute!

And while he was all full of silliness, Aquagirl got this hilarious picture of GB. Isn’t it a stitch?!

This was the first day we brought the tadpoles home.

By day three, they had elongated but were still clustered around the grassy vine, and still developing inside their gelatinous cloud.

On day five, they were already swimming, although they are very tiny.

When they need rest they just chill like this, bobbing along in a vertical direction.

But when you gently shake the aquarium, this is what happens:

Finally!
We found some frog eggs; same place that we found them last year. Embarrassing, but true, we found them in our ditch; right in our own front yard. It’s embarrassing because the water in our ditch NEVER goes away. We have determined that these are actually ‘frog’ eggs and not ‘toad’ eggs, like we guessed last year. This year we know that frogs lay their eggs in mounds of gelatinous fluid, whereas toads lay their eggs in long strands.
This explains why our tadpoles took SO long to turn into frogs last year. Frogs take much longer to morph from tadpoles to frogs. It would really be interesting to find toad eggs too, and then observe them side-by-side. So, I’ll still keep my eye out.

GB would only let me take a few eggs because he wants to promote the amphibian population in our yard. ~~smiles~~

Frog eggs: (btw, I would never do this!)

These, in the bottom picture, look more like ours did before we scooped them into the plastic container.

Toad eggs: