The Care and Keeping of Mosquitos

I am often told that I share what others may keep to themselves, for fear of mortal humilation.  I can't help myself.  Sometimes things are just too funny to hoard.  So, at the risk of being made fun of, I am going to tell a funny story about how you should, as a mother, always trust your first instinct, particularly if you are feeling too lazy to investigate further.  :)

My children often visit the "pond" beside our house.  It is not really a pond, but a good sized mud puddle that never seems to dry up.  It is about a foot deep and about 2 foot in diameter.  :-D  They came in the house with jars of the "pond" water and were all excitedly chattering about the tadpoles they found.  I looked and said, "I don't think it is tadpoles, I think they are baby mosquitos."  They insisted they were tadpoles, so I asked their dad about it.  He confirmed that they were not baby mosquitos, but some other kind of water bug.  Well, I briefly looked closer and saw a big head and a tail on the little jokers, and said, "Ok, they are tadpoles."  Made sense because we have numerous frogs and toads out here, they are literally everywhere, like a plague or something. 

Anyway, we put the jars on the mantle and then on the back of the sink in the kitchen.  The kids asked me to help them find out what tadpoles eat, so they wouldn't die.  So, I made a couple calls and looked up some web pages about the care and keeping of tadpoles.  A couple of pieces of lettuce in the freezer later and we had tadpole food.  The children enjoyed tearing off teeny pieces and threw them in the jar.

Yesterday, I noticed that there were a couple of mosquitos floating on the top of the water in jar. There were also a couple of dead tadpoles so I fished them all out and put them in the drain.  Mosquitos are very thick around here and we have to spray on bug spray and light citronella candles if we want to be outside at dusk, so it did not occur to me to think anything other than a couple of mosquitos got into the house and were thirsty. (Stop laughing at me.)

This morning I got up and noticed ALL the tadpoles were dead.  At this point I knew something was up.  I inspected it more closely and realized, they were not dead, they were empty shells. When a mosquito bit me as I was standing there by the kitchen sink, contemplating that I had been taking care of icky bugs all this time, I was not suprised, but I was pretty ticked.  How dare that mosquito bite the hand that fed it.

I killed it.  Then I ordered a "grow a frog" kit for the children.  So, being a believer in all things education and a having a desire to put some pictures on this post, I will leave you with these:

Aquatic creatures that grow up to be frogs or toads.....

Aquatic creatures who grow up to be blood sucking nuisances