Tadpoles

I spent half of my childhood exploring a portion of the wild outback of the San Joaquin River bank. Having a backyard that basically backed up to a river sounds a lot more glamorous than it was. For starters, this portion of the river was rurally desolate and it was a known trash bucket area. To top it all off, the river was dry almost the entire season. Either the snow melt had already been sucked dry by the heat or the dam prevented its passage through beautiful ol Visalia's farm land. My sisters and I would go on safaris over the sandy paths that had been paved by the classy dirt bikers living on the other side. We would ride the treacherous paths on our mountain bikes and give these "streets" incredibly creative names like "Snake Path" for the one where we rolled over a big dead snake in our way or "Sunday Drive" for the path that had very little undulating hill excitement. The dry river bed also became my exercise route with the sheep that I would eventually raise as part of the 4-H club. That is a topic for another day. Occasionally some water would trickle through only to dry up soon after. In its wake would be puddled remnants of its passing. Those puddles were homes to large numbers of tadpoles. I returned to these tadpole homes often fascinated as I watched them morph into frog like creatures. Most often though, the puddles would begin to dry up before the tadpoles could fully develop into froggy adulthood. I started to collect as many as I could (without getting caught by my parents) so I could watch them grow and survive at home where I wouldn't allow the water to dry up. It didn't always work. You can't win them all I guess.

I feel like my job has me monitoring tadpole children and trying to place them in environments where they are no longer prevented from developing as they should. We don't have enough volunteers to help facilitate those environments and that is frustrating. But there are times when we get that one tadpole in safer waters and watch them thrive. That feels good. I recently spent a lot of time researching the developmental stages of children's drawings for a presentation I gave to the volunteers. Interestingly, I discovered that researchers call the drawings of 2-5 year olds "tadpole" figures. How appropriate.