お玉杓子

 
otamajakushi is the Japanese word for ‘tadpoles’. Yes, it is spring and that means the Gaynor-Takahashi zoo must be replenished with its yearly quota of small, aquatic creatures. Dogs and cats are out as (a) we have no garden to speak of so we can’t leave them outside; (b) all three of us are out of the house from 7:30 to 18:00, so leaving an animal that can poo and pee at will in the house is a non-starter; and (c) in winter it is so cold outside that you would have to keep the animal inside day and night which brings us back to (b). We did consider getting something small and furry like a hamster but there is always the danger that Sanae might get fed up looking after it, ‘inadvertently’ deep fry it and serve it to us for dinner. So we stick with the fish and tadpoles, augmenting this in summer with various stag beetles, noisy crickets, and if we’re lucky, the occasional short-lived firefly.
So yesterday we went to get the tadpoles. It was a nice, brisk sunny day and being the eco-responsible-Subaru-driving-Patagonia-clothed family we aspire to be, myself and Cian cycled up and into the forest.



All of which was made a tad more strenuous that it should have been by Cian’s refusal to raise his saddle. He claimed that all his friends have their saddles low. I pointed out that all his friends are smaller than him and need to have their saddles low or their feet wouldn’t touch the ground. You, Cian, I argued, have the opposite problem: your saddle is so low your knees are almost banging into your chin. Still, he wouldn’t listen to solid Irish reason, but kept the saddle low, looking like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider.

Cian and Peter Fonda go for a ride.

We found the tadpoles, or rather tadpole eggs as most of them haven’t hatched yet, duly scooped up some and brought them home. Turns out we brought more than just ‘some’ home. When the silt had settled in the glass tank and we could see things clearly, we had a lot of eggs in there. A lot. Mammy wasn’t happy, visions of hoards of frogs overrunning (over-leaping?) the house at the end of June. We promised that we’d let them loose before then, probably into the garden of the old decker who lives across the road from us.