New Members of the Family!

Meet Adam and Little Joe! Yes, the boys named them after two of the boys on Bonanza!


Oriental fire-bellied toads



Their habitat

and their dinner!

Jackson received a tadpole/frog habitat for his birthday. It comes with a mail-in certificate for a FREE tadpole. The shipping for the tadpole is $7.99. Determined to NOT pay $7.99 for shipping for a tadpole, I set off to the nearest PetSmart. Drew just knew my little adventure would cost us $50 instead of $7.99. He tried to get me to just pay the $7.99 and be done with it. I wouldn't hear of it.

So, my friend, Kecia, and I took her daughter, Brea, and Bryson and Jackson to go pick out two tadpoles at PetSmart. When we got there, of course, there were no tadpoles. I decided to get two frogs instead and then I wouldn't have to worry about killing the tadpoles. They only had one kind of frog and they were $6.99 each. Way under Drew's prediction of $50, so I decided to buy them. The friendly girl working at PetSmart reminded me that frogs need to eat. They eat crickets. Okay, I ask for 30 crickets~ enough to feed two frogs for a week. (They each eat 2 crickets a day. I bought two extra crickets in case a couple die.) The friendly girl at PetSmart reminded me that the crickets will need some place to live. She kindly showed us the cricket house. The crickets also need to eat. I picked up a jar of cricket food. Yes, you can see where this is going! I ended up spending more on the CRICKETS than on the frogs!

But all was not lost because Drew was wrong about the $50. I only spent $39.47. Clearly under his prediction of $50. (I did tell the friendly PetSmart girl that I COULD NOT spent $50 because I had to prove my husband wrong!) So, 30 minutes and $39.47 later, we are the proud owners of two Oriental fire-bellied toads that are supposed to live 10-20 years and grow to be 5-6 inches long! We'll just have to see about that!

After we set up the habitat, cricket house and got the "boys" settled into their new home, Drew googled Oriental fire-bellied toads. He read that if one toad jumps on the back of another toad, the one on top is most likely a male. Bryson's toad, Adam, jumped on top of Jackson's toad, Little Joe. He quickly pointed this out to Jackson and told Jackson that Little Joe was really a girl. Jackson was not too happy with this information. Then, upon further examination, the boys noticed that Little Joe only has one hand! He right hand is missing. So not only does Jackson have a girl toad, he also has a handicapped toad!

I talked to Jackson this morning and told him that Adam probably accidentally jumped on Little Joe because they were excited about their new home and I was sure his toad was really a boy. This satisfied him. Hopefully, Little Joe won't lay eggs any time soon!