When we were looking for a home to buy in this rural south Florida community nearly twenty years ago, a real estate agent introduced us to this property by telling us how charming she thought the street and creek names were. I was not impressed. To be honest, I was still digging in my heels about moving here to begin with, and there was very little, if anything, about the house that I liked. Louis, however, was totally enamoured with the property. He was convinced that a little acreage, a pond and a creek were the perfect place to raise our little boys. I suspect that he also envisioned that moving here would require the purchase of bigger and better power tools. He was right on both accounts.
After six months of living out of boxes in a disgusting rental home and not being able to find a home to buy, I surrendered, and we bought our little patch of earth on Pollywog Creek. The boys were thrilled, wasting no time finding the perfect spot to build "forts" and discovering favorite places along the creek to explore. They even swam in the pond, with it's mushy bottom. Not one to appreciate slime and dirt with the same enthusiasm, I watched from a distance and tossed them a bar of soap and the water hose when their adventures for the day had ceased. I knew that there were pollywogs in the pond, naturally, but I am more of the chrysalis/butterfly/flowers type, so I never encouraged the boys to remove the pollywogs from their habitat, where I figured the boys could watch them grow up to be frogs without bringing stinking pond water and other slimy, gooey stuff into the house.
A little more than two years ago, I noticed that people were coming to my blog looking for information about pollywogs. Some were looking for what to feed a pollywog. Others were looking for pictures. Quite obviously they were disappointed in their search engine for sending them here. I decided I should oblige them, but despite the efforts of the males in the family who have been willing to venture close enough to the pond to capture one, there hasn't been a visible pollywog here in a very long time. Until yesterday. The drought earlier this year left our pond lower than it has been in the years we have been here, and the dry bed lured me (and my camera) in for a closer look. I noticed that something was really stirring up the water...
Pollywogs! A gazillion pollywogs! So to all those searching for pollywog pictures, I now have a page for Google to take you!
