people he seems happiest when he is young; when he is a lively little tadpole. See him flirt and flip and flash through the water, playing with his little brother and sister tadpoles, as boys and girls play with each other, in the sunshine. Later, when he puts legs on his body and teeth in his mouth, hops out into the hard world and earns his living, he has many sober moments.
It would be better for Mr. Frog if he could stay longer with his mama—or even if he knew he had a mama to stay with! And Mama Frog would learn to be much brighter and to bring up brighter sons and daughters if she stayed with her little ones and brooded them and fed them, for awhile, as the birds do.
For, as we know, it is the animals that stay longest with their mamas and brothers and sisters that are the brightest and best of all. This whole group of animals to which the frog belongs are named "ver'-te-brates"—which means they have backbones. You're a ver'-te-brate. All Mama Frog ever does for her little ones is to find a nice, warm shallow place in which to lay her eggs. This she does in the spring. These eggs she covers with a thick coat of jelly that helps protect them from fish and other water animals that like a breakfast of fresh frog eggs.
After while, lying in this warmed shallow water, the frog's egg begins to grow long and narrow. A tadpole is on the inside stretching himself, after a sound sleep. And, sure enough, pretty soon, out wriggles a baby tadpole.
He doesn't seem to know yet that he is a baby frog. He seems to think he's an oyster; for he first fastens himself to a water weed or something of that sort, with a sucker fastener like the oyster's foot. Later, this sucker foot turns into a mouth—or rather he lets go, and begins to swim around and uses for a mouth what he had been using for a foot.
It is as if he said to himself: "No, come to think of it, I'm not an oyster. I'm a fish."
And so he goes plowing himself through the water like a fish, not backing himself through the water like a crawfish. But he still carries his lungs, that is, his gills, on the outside, very much as the lobster does all his life. So, for a while, it looks as if he had "half a notion" to be, not a fish, but a crawfish.
"But no," he says. "I think it will be more fun to play fish." So he soon gets rid of the outside gills and grows a new set that he puts inside, under a lid—just as the fish does.
