My friend Tristen rescued spadefoot toad tadpoles from a flooded road, which was not going to stay flooded for very long. She nurtured the tadpoles in a bucket and a pool, feeding them dried shrimp, baby frog formula pellets, and algae-based wafers. In two weeks, they grew into fully formed spadefoot toads. (These amphibians are supremely adapted to desert life and emerge from their burrows after summer monsoons to breed in ephemeral pools. The tadpoles metamorphose on hyperdrive.)
As the young spadefoots, one by one, hopped out of their pool and back into the wild, they inevitably suffered some casualties to birds!
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