WHAT ARE THESE CREATURES?

Amongst all the pretty things, mostly flowers and blooms, form our recent rain, I found these little creatures that aroused my curiosity I came across them yesterday morning in a small two feet by four foot puddle left from the recent rain shower.

At first, I thought they were small eggs, but on closer inspection, and from the fact that when you touched them they would move, that they were not eggs. They would move in-mass. If you stuck you finger in the middle off them, the would instantly move away creating a empty circle around your finger.

I looked at my finger, and I had probably 50 of them on my finger tip. They would slowly all leap from my finger back into the water or be carried away in the breeze. The creatures were extremely tiny. about the size of a comma (,) in 12 pt type. These old eyes could not make out any other features.

I had grown a little tired of shooting macro so of course all I was carrying a 300mm lens. I returned back to the puddle with my macro set up. I didn’t put something in the photo to scale it, but  the “farther off” image measures about four inches across. The other photo is a one inch section of the same photo enlarged for detail.

I assume they are some form of Cladocera, water fleas. Even though they do not resemble any of the body shapes I could find on Google. When I went back for my PM walk, they were almost all gone.

Anybody got some more info or guesses as to what they little fellows are?