Tadpoles

I think tapping off a quick post before hitting the sack is starting to become a habit. Maybe a good one.

Anyway, since I’ve been so dedicated to upgrading and maintaining the Rattle website for the last two years — and maybe because I just like stats — I’ve become obsessed with monitoring referral data. I check the web traffic just about every day, taking a peak at most referring links, and scanning our search terms. Sometimes the latter can be funny, like “Karyna McGlynn naked” (not making that one up), other times it can be interesting.

Tonight there were a dozen search requests listed in the last 24 hours for “mail order tadpoles,” which is obviously due to Lisa Hickey’s delightful poem. But here’s the interesting thing — the average duration of that pageview is 4 minutes and 8 seconds, meaning those dozen people looking for tadpoles aren’t just hitting “back” when they see we don’t sell them — it seems like they’re stopping to read the poem first! What a great thought, those shoppers looking for amphibians and finding poetry that tells them something rich about their forthcoming experience. If that isn’t the quintessential cyberpoetry moment, I don’t know what is.

2 Comments

  1. I don’t mean to be a downer — I find the poem to be very beautiful. But I thought I might take the opportunity to educate Rattle readers & stray Google searchers about the consequences of releasing pets into the wild. Non-native bullfrogs are a major problem for ecosystems. Please, folks, don’t release your mail-order frogs into the wild.

    See National Geographic, “Invading Bullfrogs Appear Nearly Unstoppable”

  2. Great point — don’t worry about it. Never a bad time for an important reminder.

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