After our 19 month stint in an urban jungle, (and then six months in Texas) we are finally back where the green grass grows, and more importantly, the green trees. And we are enjoying it immensely.
This is the nest that a robin so thoughtfully built right outside our laundry room window. I watched her bravely sit on her eggs for two weeks, and now there are little robin babies. I can count three. (She picked a really good place for her nest, it's almost impossible to get to (unless you're a robin), and very well protected from the elements.
But this is not all that we've found. A few weeks ago we found a slug in the middle of our downstairs. (On the carpet, that must have really taxed it.) In a moment of thoughtfulness, instead of squishing it flat, my husband put it in a jar so we could show Kiddo. I wasn't sure about that idea, and didn't show it to her until late the next afternoon. She was delighted. And almost immediately started talking about Slug (it's name) being her first pet. She took it on a whirlwind tour of the house, and had Babs teach him how to color in the first afternoon. ("Babs, tell Slug, 'do you want to color?'" "you wan co-lo?" "Babs, tell Slug...")
Kiddo
really wants a pet. She tells us constantly how she is getting a cat and a dog when she gets older. We, the parents, remain non-committal, leaning towards, don't count on it. So her choosing the first living thing she saw enclosed in our house as a pet should not have surprised us. (Yet our daughter is also all about the next great thing in her life, so we're not sure she's got the attention span for a pet anyway.)
But its now part of our evening routine. Part of going to bed for Kiddo is to watch my husband or I clean the tupperware, then she refills the water dish (distilled water, tap water is chlorinated, thus toxic for the slug), and make sure its still moving. (Really, how else do we know he's still alive?) We've learned that slugs like to hide. This particular one loves cucumbers. It's actually pretty, for a slug. It will be heading back to nature soon, but I keep trying to remind my husband, as pets go, this one is pretty low maintenance.
