“Yum!” I, a still-in-the-egg tadpole, exclaimed as I ate the yolk of the egg my unknown mom had lain.
Suddenly I froze, feeling unfriendly eyes on me and my brother and sister tadpoles. At first, I thought it was one of those dangerous long-legged creatures again, yet this time it was a squint-eyed water scorpion. “CHOMP!” It snatched up a bundle of eggs, right next to me and my sibling’s egg group! It took the breath of water right out of me, but thankfully the scorpion swam straight past us to go after some other small creature.
About 2 weeks since my unknown mom had laid the eggs and I had had my scorpion adventure, many of my siblings were squeezing out of the yummy jelly-like ball. Following their example, I squished out and floated freely through the water. I was careful though, because I had watched an older group of tadpoles squeeze out and some had been in the “bright thing in the sky’s” (I learned later it was called the sun) light too long and had gathered some bad stuff, plus some others got caught in this acidic looking water. So as I happily ate some yummy looking algae, enjoying my new freedom, I remained alert and kept to the cooler, darker water.
About 6 weeks later, I felt my under water gills disappearing and forming these new land breathing lungs (even though I couldn’t walk on land.)These lungs were very strange and new yet exciting, plus my floppy tail and my head rapidly grew till I was a full sized tadpole. (I was still small to humans and predators, but to myself I was huge!)
Wonderfully, in the next 8 weeks, I felt little shivers down in my behind which were my new long frog LEGS coming in! (Though I didn’t know that yet.) I still had to swim though, for I didn’t have any front arms, but it was fun being in the froglet stage, yet little did I know what was just a few stages away.
Eventually, (it seemed like forever, but it was really around a year) my cool front legs formed around my still growing head. Even before my front legs came in, life was still dangerous and daring. Once a human (those were the “long- legged creatures”) came and tried to capture me in a NET! Can you believe that?! It was the most frightening part of my whole life! There had also been other troubles during this stage of my life. You see, one tree crowded area of the pond got cut DOWN! That too was terrifying, luckily though there were other parts of the pond for me and some other uneaten froglets to jump to.
After my green (for my whole body was now an attractive green) front legs grew in, my tail shrank as fast as a delicious chocolate chip cookie and my body, mouth and legs kept growing. While this wonderful metamorphosis was going on, adult frogs from other ponds were warning our pond’s frogs of a weird weather (or some word like that) change. It didn’t sound good and apparently our pond’s frogs thought so too, for every day there were many frogs leaving to go to a safer pond. I felt so impatient for my growing body to hurry up and make me an ADULT frog! Not to mention get me out of this pond where danger was sooo close!
Thankfully, I didn’t have long to wait, for one day I woke up to the brightly shining sun and guess what… I was an ADULT frog! I was so happy I did a frog jig right there. I soon hopped out, with all the other newly made adult frogs, of this dangerous pond to another one which was, at least for the time being, free from danger. There I was very strongly attracted (it was now spring and all the male frogs were after me and all the females) to a dashing male frog, who, I might add, fought for me. Together, we made eggs, which will, if they are as fortunate as I, turn into tadpoles, and survive the life cycle of a frog just as I was able to do.
