Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Name change and tadpoles

I've decided to change the name of my blog, since I don't own a Semaphore Caboose trailer, but rather an American Leisure Time Industries caboose trailer. The official name change will happen in a day or two, so if you have it bookmarked you will have to type in the new name and bookmark that since I can't figure out how to make semaphorecaboose.blogspot.com point to the new name. And the new name will be......... drum roll............. NightskyAndPrairiewind.blogspot.com

The new photo at the top shows a black and white photo from a Life magazine article published in August 1970 and is the only photo I've ever seen of an ALTI caboose travel trailer. The color photo is what my train wreck of a camper looked like shortly after purchasing it. Hopefully before too many years go by mine will look as nice as the Life magazine subject.

As for the new name, Night*sky is a name I've used since 1974 when I started backpacking and was told that you always use a 'trail name' when hiking. When I discovered the internet in the late 1990's I naturally used night*sky as my name on lots of different forums and websites. Prairiewind is the name my daughter uses on some forums. Since she currently live in the house here in TN and travels with me extensively I figured I'd use both in the blog name, since Nightsky alone was already taken.

Enough of that, let's move on to the fun stuff.... tadpoles! We have tree frogs here in middle Tennessee, LOTS of tree frogs!  They have been singing for the past month or so, and it can be difficult to hear normal conversation on the porch in the evening because they are so loud! We think a few of these tree frogs decided the stock tank I use for the dog's water was a great place to lay eggs. A week ago I noticed something floating on the surface of the stock tank, and sure enough, it was dozens of packets of frog eggs, each packet containing 30-50 eggs or more.

They hatched and became free swimming just a couple days after we discovered them. Thinking it would be fun to watch them a bit closer up we scooped some out of the stock tank and put them in a critter keeper. Unfortunately we also scooped up about a zillion mosquito larvae! Both species were thriving in the critter keeper, but I decided I didn't really want to be fostering skeeters and they needed to go. I dipped all the tadpoles out using a gravy ladle (there are 78 of them  lol) and poured the water through a coffee filter to filter out the skeeters. I'm sure a few got dipped out with the tadpoles, but at least the number of them is MUCH smaller! The critter keeper was scrubbed, refilled with fresh water, I added a couple of the decaying leaves that were in the stock tank and some bruised lettuce leaves for the tadpoles to eat. They seem very happy with the new arrangement and are happily munching on the lettuce.They're very small, just a "tad" over 1/4 inch long.




I believe it takes a month or two for them to metamorphosize. Once they grow legs and can get around on dry ground  we'll let them go in the yard. And once the thousands that are in the stock tank grow legs we'll tip the stock tank and stop raising mosquitos!  LOL

1 comment:

  1. That's so neat! Raising little frogs.

    I've changed the blog name on my list.

    ReplyDelete