Ginger is just adorable!! If you have a cat that is a good mouser, they most definitely help keep the population of small rodents under control. That is what they were domesticated to do! Both houses I've owned were infested with mice when I moved in. Fortunately, both times I had a good mouser that took care of that problem. They have great patience, stealth, and determination; I watched a former cat wait for hours for a mouse to appear from under the refrigerator. This past winter was brutal - 7 feet of snow in 6 weeks - and the voles were having a field day under all that snow. There was an unusual amount of vole damage to my perennials. Also, the chipmunks are out of control this Spring. They are (or were) running around EVERYWHERE. My "good hunter girl" is taking care of this problem, catching them daily. I am conflicted about the fact that my cat occasionally kills birds too, and have taken great pains to locate the feeders and bird baths so that they are safe from the cat. However, cats are not the biggest killer of birds; by far, it is human destruction of their habitat, followed by collisions with buildings and other structures, windows, and cars. Cats are estimated to kill 200-300 million birds per year in the US; collisions kill up to 1 billion.

Hi Andyg: My pond is going into it's 5th season. For the first three I had adult frogs (green & leopard) doing their thing with no tadpoles. Last year goodkarma posted directions for making floating plant islands as well as gifting me with one. The frogs love to sit on the islands and call to each other all summer. Apparently they laid and fertilized their eggs there too. The tadpoles were able to survive hiding in the planter holes and between the plants where the fish can't get to them to eat them. I have koi, shubunkin, goldfish and one blue gill. To my surprise when I broke down the pond last fall and dismantled the islands there were tadpoles galore. I collected them in a bucket and placed them in my settlement pond to overwinter. I have been running a stock tank heater all winter to keep the settlement pond from freezing over (see pics). Hopefully my frogs and tads survive this winter. You may want to make a few of these floating planter islands to see if it works for you too. Here is the link to the directions. Happy frogging. I am so looking foward to spring. Jenny Here is a link that might be useful: How to make the floating island

digger, the first year or two we had a pond, we were delighted that the toads used it to spawn in. We made a floating,nursery basket to keep the toad tadpoles from being eaten by the fish and we were thrilled to see the little toad-lets eventually take off into their new world, our garden and farther afield, to feed on all the pesky insects that chew up our flowers and plants. What I did not count on was, that the following years those precious little toad-lets, now mature, would return to their Garden of Eden to beget more spawn, from which commeth more toads to beget, prosper and multiply again and again, until the noise from hundreds of them, begetting and singing their praises all night long in the spring, would have awakened the dead. I have transported gallons of spawn, heaps of tadpoles and hundreds of adult toads to a nature area near us. Where they can beget to their little heart's content and sing happily all night without bothering me or my neighbours. Toads are much hardier and are surviving at a better rate, than their cousins the frogs, in to-days poisoned environment. With the upsurge in garden water features and the protection they afford to these amphibians, toads have a greater chance of survival and multiplying. Again, like a number of other pond related subjects, it is up to the individual pond owner to decide what is in or out, what they want or don't want, in their personal little Eden's. For me a couple of toads in and around my pond, is fine, as long as they are both of the same sex. :) I don't want to go through all that noise and transporting again. "Horton"

Do you have fish in your pond? I have lots of tadpoles and they grow up and leave in one season unless they are bull frog tadpoles and they take 2 seasons to mature. You can look for them with a flashlight at night to see what kind of frog or toad poles you have or go to a website that has frog and toad mating calls for identification. Be sure to leave them a way to get out of the pond when they are mature-thru climbing out on plants or stacked rocks to climb out on. Most of my tadpoles are toads and are very tiny when they mature. About dime size. You have to watch where you step around the pond when they leave since they all seem to leave at the same time. I enjoy the tadpoles and watching them mature. I do try to catch and relocate the bull frogs that find their way into my pond because they eat my fish babies and the smaller fish.