The Many Uses of A Dog House

Our cousin Lauren spent the night on Friday.  She and Hayes had big plans to catch tadpoles the next morning.  They waited and waited impatiently while I helped Spence with the sprinklers, fed, dressed, and medicined Chase, and finally was ready to go.  When Chase and I got outside, they had left without us on the four-wheeler.  So we took my car and went in search of them.  I was pretty sure they were headed to the new ditch behind the canal.  We found them slopping through muddy clay to catch tadpoles with their hands.  Hayes told me he couldn't remember where the "lake" (very loose term) was that we had gone to last year.  Luckily it's just across the road, so with Chase on my back, we set off to the lake.

Hayes and Lauren canvassing the lake.

They return to inform Chase and I that we were out of luck and must return to the mud hole behind the canal.

 

We made it half way and had to take a break.  Chase was sick, but wouldn't be left behind.  I'm going to blame his crazy hair on the sickness.

I was too muddy to get any pictures of the actual fishing/hunting.  We used a combination of plastic bags, my only kitchen sieve, and bare hands to fill our jars with tadpoles and frogs.

That's not a giant, mutated, prehistoric tadpole, I think it's a piece of clay off of the bottom of Hayes' boot.

Taking a moment for a famous Potato Farm Clay beauty treatment.  Luckily I had brought a good kitchen towel to clean one hand off good enough to take a picture.

 

Kind of mean that I took this picture, but Chase was freaking out crying, "Clean, clean!"  He'd had his fun and wanted the mud off NOW!  I think it's time to go home. Oh that hair!

After maneuvering all of the fences (quite a trick and only one bloody back...Hayes'), all four of us hopped on the four-wheeler and headed for home.  There was no way I was going to let anyone get in my car that muddy.  I made Hayes stop so I could take a picture of the sky.  I love skies like this.

Out of focus, but that's what you get with one with only one clean hand and 3 little punks bumping you.

I noticed that bloggers (especially Pioneer Woman) are into taking pictures of their feet.  So here are mine....thank goodness I opted for my old boots.

Checking out the spoils.

We had to find frogs in all stages of the life cycle.  Here's the end result.

Meanwhile, we had to come up with a place to keep them all after we rinsed the mud off them and us. I went down to the field and stole back the bottom half of our dog house that Spence had been using as a generator cover.  We poured all of the tadpoles through the sieve, gave them a quick rinse with the hose and deposited them in the water-filled dog house.  This process only claimed one victim's life.  A weird fish-looking creature that Spence says was a salamander in an early stage.  I'll have to look it up to check on him :) It also looks a little like a craw-dad. Can anyone confirm?

Now we've got to figure out how to protect them from Chase.  He squashed his fair share last year.

And then there's Jack. He seems quite interested himself.

I think we really did get most of the stages.

All-in-all a pretty successful Saturday....until later when I had to take Chase to the urgent care for his "sickness" which turned out to be a double ear infection.  Poor boy...what a trooper.  Too bad they don't do sedated haircuts at the urgent care.