1 turtle, 20 snails & 10 tadpoles...

Freddie the turtle lived with us for 2 weeks this month courtesy of a neighbor who found him while mowing their front lawn. I know how much animals make my oldest son happy so I volunteered to take Freddie when my neighbor told me he found two but they only wanted to keep one. "We will totally take it." I said. So for two weeks, Freddie, the baby turtle with the shell the size of a quarter, lived on our kitchen counter. I must say that it was quite interesting to watch the little guy. Turtles have much more of a personality than one might think. He watched us walk around the kitchen as we went about our day, tucked his legs in to sleep at night when it got dark and would even come up and sit on his little rock when we would hand feed him worms that we found in our yard. He knew that when the top of his terrarium was lifted, it was feeding time and he was always ready. He really was pretty cute. But he was also stinky and after 2 weeks of cleaning out his tank every other day, I was able to talk my son into setting him free in a forest preserve near our house where we like to walk our dog and check out nature. Ahhh, yes, that meant no more turtle racing on the kitchen table at the hands of little boys but it did mean he would probably have a long, happy life.

So off we went, the entire family plus our dog, to let Freddie go. I was so looking forward to not having one more thing to take care of. But as my sons were bending down to let him go, they spotted tadpoles swimming around in the little pond. And my husband said, "Hey guys, why don't you scoop up some water and a few tadpoles and we can take them home?" Famous last words. We now have 10 tadpoles, which are actually starting to grow legs, and about 20 baby snails living on our kitchen counter in Freddie's old tank. Thankfully, they seem to be doing just fine despite the fact that we don't change the water. We feed them fish food and check them out several times a day. They don't have names yet but my kids are working on it. Here we go again...