Mother Nature knows best

I was a tadpole mom. This is how my friend Sally — an authentic nature girl — put it once; and the label has greater and more positive implications than I realise, she explained.

I didn’t set out to be a tadpole mom and neither does anyone who tells the child responsible for introducing them into the household that “you’ll have to keep them alive if you want them, hey, so don’t expect me to.

It’s not going to happen. That’s the condition.

You decide.”

Which is never how it works with puppies, kittens or silkworms either.

Every Sunday, when we had baby tadpoles in the house, I boiled iceberg or butter lettuce for a week’s worth of tadpole breakfasts and snacks, while the kids popped over to the big tub on the deck to check that their tadpoles, barely froglets, weren’t dead.

How one raises tadpoles gives a quick-study analysis of the person you are.

Where I prodded amphibian websites for detailed information on what to feed, when to feed and types of water conducive to proper metamorphosis, others let them get on with being what nature intended: small things in a big pond, taking their chances.

While I didn’t lose a ‘taddy’ in the beginning — there were 21 and, for a while, that number remained the same — I spent a lot of time worrying about them.

As for Sally, from whose garden we procured the wee beasties, her view on tadpole mothering extends simply to not accidentally tipping over the various empty tins or garden pots in which they’ve hatched.

Hers didn’t get fed or changed, but they were happy.

The more I try to control the pets that I didn’t want in the first place, the more I realise that a relaxed attitude towards tadpole care — which reflects a chilled outlook on life generally — clearly demonstrates that nature knows best, while the obsessive among us are probably killing the planet.

Which is probably why I never get plants for my birthday.