“No wonder I couldn’t get my foot in!” laughed Uncle Ben. “The turtle took up all the room.”
“Put it in a box so it can’t get away,” said Daddy Martin. “The children can play with it. They won’t hurt it, and the turtle isn’t the snapping kind, so it won’t bite them.”
The queer pet Trouble had found was put in a wooden box, high enough on the sides to keep the creature from crawling out. Then Uncle Ben put on the other rubber boot and fixed the motor boat.
Meanwhile Trouble and Teddy, walking up and down the shore of the lake, were looking for more turtles. They did not see any, but they found plenty of other things to make them happy. There were frogs, and there were little fishes swimming close to shore in the shallow water. But every time the boys tried to catch a fish or a frog they missed. The fishes gave little flips of their tails and swam away, and the frogs hopped into deeper water.
There were other little swimming creatures, however—tiny black tadpoles, that, some day, would turn into frogs. And by scooping up water in their cupped hands Ted and Trouble caught some of the “taddies.”
“Let’s put ’em in a can and watch ’em turn into frogs,” suggested Ted. “That’ll be fun, won’t it, Trouble?”
“Um—yes,” agreed the smaller boy.
Ted found an old tomato can, filled it with water, and then he and his brother caught more tadpoles. Soon they had a dozen swimming around in the water of the can.
“Now we’ll sit down and watch ’em turn into frogs,” said Ted, as he carried the can over to a shady place.
Uncle Ben had told him that the tadpoles, though they had a tail at first, lost it after a while, and then grew two feet, and then, later, had four feet and legs, and finally were frogs.