In the deep murky waters of a garden pond Glub the tadpole woke up from his bed of pondweed. His lot on life was swimming around, munching algae and not much else. But the last few weeks were different. Last week he’d grown front legs, and the week before that he’d grown back ones. He stretched his spindly limbs, waggled his long tail and swam up to meet his friends: Slim the newt and Paddles the water boatman.
“Hi guys!” Glub said with a wave. Slim looked up from his breakfast of blanket-weed and water fleas and heard Glub’s greeting.
“Good to see you Glub.” The newt said with a grin. Glub joined his friends and took a bite out of some algae and gulped it down.
“Do you know…” asked Glub thoughtfully, “ever since I got these legs, I’ve been wondering what they do? I mean, they help with pulling through the weeds when they get too long but I could easily just eat it…”
“They’re for coming out of the water,” Slim replied. Glub seemed shocked.
“Well, truthfully I’ve never been out of the water…” Slim admitted. “Paddles has though…”
“Yeah, I went out there once.” Paddles said. “It’s not really for me though. Why don’t you give it a try?”
Glub swallowed the last of his food and swam up to the surface. With a shudder at what could be out there he lifted his foot out of the water and onto a rock. He then crawled out warily.
“What’s it like, Glub?” Slim called from below.
“Not bad.” Glub replied back, “In fact, it’s quite…Woah!” A cat had snatched him in its jaws by his tail! Glub dangled helplessly as the cat took him away from the pond. Suddenly his tail slipped from the cat’s teeth and fell into a cabbage patch. A group of slugs saw the whole thing. Glub got back on his feet and shook the soil off his skin.
“Get out, frog!” a slug said rudely. “This is slug turf!” it added as it spat half eaten cabbage at Glub, who scurried away under a flowerpot.
“This was a bad idea…” Glub lamented. “How am I going to get back?” Just then, the leaves behind him rustled, and a Slowworm poked its head out. Glub was inclined to run.
“Don’t worry, I won’t eat you.” The Slowworm said kindly. “You want to get back to your pond?” Glub nodded yes.
“Follow the sound of running water.” The Slowworm said before slipping back into the leaves.
Glub scrambled out of the flowerpot, but the cat had spotted him, and wanted him for dinner! As he hopped towards the pond, the cat gave chase. It got closer until Glub bounded into the pond. The cat did the same, but only fell in the pond with a screech and ran off.
“Glub!” Slim and Paddles exclaimed, “You’re back!
“Good to be back,” sighed Glub “I don’t think I’ll be doing that again
for a long time…”
