The Great Mississippi Tadpole Migration
By: Amanda Hargrove
I took my grandsons and my youngest daughter to Ballard Park the other afternoon, and like little boys have done since Noah unloaded the Ark, they ignored the perfectly good playground and headed straight for the creek. Granted all Noah’s boys had was mud but it’s the analogy I chose, just go with it.
Nobody spends a hundred thousand dollars building monkey bars because children would rather play in a ditch.
Within five minutes my grandsons were ankle-deep in muddy water catching tadpoles.
Little boys possess an amazing ability to locate mud. I honestly believe if you dropped one in the Sahara Desert, they would come home muddy.
My youngest grandson came running toward me holding a tiny tadpole like he’d just landed the state record largemouth bass.
I said, “Do you want Bleau to get you a Mason jar?”
He looked horrified.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want Mason getting my tadpoles.”
It took me a second.
The poor child thought I was talking about some little boy named Mason.
That’s when I realized children today recognize Bluetooth before they recognize a Mason jar.
That conversation carried me back to 2004 when my oldest daughter, Maddie, was four years old and completely obsessed with catching tadpoles in my daddy’s pond behind our house in Myrtle.
She loved those things.
I don’t know why.
Maybe because tadpoles are the only creatures uglier than little boys after they’ve played in a creek.
That summer we were flying from Memphis to Las Vegas to visit my brother.
Most children packed stuffed animals.
Mine packed amphibians.
She insisted her cousins in Vegas needed Mississippi tadpoles.
Who was I to argue with a four-year-old zoologist?
Now this was before airports decided shampoo was a national security threat.
Back then you could apparently board a commercial airliner carrying a Mason jar full of pond water and unidentified swimming creatures.
Nobody blinked.
Today TSA would probably evacuate Terminal B.
So we punched holes in the lid, filled the jar with pond water, dropped in the tadpoles, and boarded the airplane.
That little girl carried those tadpoles from Memphis all the way to McCarran Airport like they were the Crown Jewels.
She never put that jar down.
Then we arrived in Las Vegas.
If you’ve never been to Las Vegas, let me explain something.
Grass lives there under witness protection.
My brother’s backyard consisted of a swimming pool, a swing set, decorative rocks, and enough artificial turf to fool tourists.
There wasn’t a pond within shouting distance.
But that didn’t concern the children.
They found a low spot in the fake grass, poured out the Mississippi pond water, added a little Las Vegas garden hose water (which I’m pretty sure had enough chlorine to sanitize a hospital) sand lovingly tucked those tadpoles into what they believed was their new home.
Then Mother Nature decided to show off.
That week temperatures climbed so high our flight home was delayed because airplanes don’t like taking off when it’s over 114 degrees.
Think about that.
A multimillion-dollar jet said, “No thanks.”
Meanwhile, a handful of tadpoles from Myrtle, Mississippi shrugged it off.
A week in the desert.
Eight sticky little hands.
Questionable housing.
Dubious water quality.
And they were still swimming.
I’ve seen grown men complain louder because McDonald’s forgot their fries.
Watching my grandkids catch tadpoles the other day, I realized something.
Times really have changed.
Kids carry tablets instead of Mason jars.
They know every Wi-Fi password in town but can’t identify a bullfrog.
They can beat a video game in three hours but have never spent an afternoon trying to catch something that wiggles.
And apparently they think Mason is just another kid at the park.
Maybe that’s how life works.
Every generation loses a little something and gains something else.
But every now and then a muddy creek, a handful of tadpoles, and one confused little boy can carry a gal all the way back to 2004.
That’s a pretty good trip for a Mason jar.