Wildlife Adventures

Zeke caught an itty bitty frog today.  (If any of you reading were present at the MOPS end of year potluck and saw him holding 4-5 frogs at a time, it was similar.  My sympathy lies with the frog who is being held by a boy who is lacking fingers.  It is probably awfully uncomfortable to be smashed against a boy's chest as he tries to keep you from hopping away.)  I was feeding the baby so my attention was elsewhere and I had threatened all of my children with loss of life and limb if they came inside and interrupted me while I was trying to put Kai down for a nap so when I headed out to check on them, they had helped themselves to one of our lidded drinking glasses to hold the frog.  I watched them play a bit, then headed in to fix lunch.  Once lunch was ready, I went out to tell the kids to come in and to tell Zeke that he needed to release the frog.  Zeke though met me as I was heading out, showing me his empty cup, and telling me that he had already let the frog go.  I should have known better.  But I took it at face value.  The kids came in, washed up, and ate their raviolis.  Next on the agenda was an hour of quiet time where everyone has to go to separate rooms and play quietly.  I usually get everyone settled but was picking up lunch first so I sent the three big kids back to their rooms unattended.  A few seconds later, Kenson pipes up, "Mom.  Zeke has the frog in here."  A quick trip to the boys' bedroom and, sure enough, the frog was sitting on Zeke's bed.  Phrase #205 that I didn't envision myself saying today, "Zeke, take the frog out of your room. "  (I think he had actually stored him the top box of Conleigh's jewelry box.)  Needless to say, the frog got a personal escort out of the house by the mama.

Then as if that wasn't enough excitement for the day, we had a deer traipse behind our backyard to eat the apples off of the tree in the vacant lot that sits right behind our house.  Our neighbor had shared a few days ago that he saw a buck doing the same thing so Zeke was quick to share with him that we too saw a deer.  Our neighbor then shared that he had gotten a wildlife camera for his birthday or Christmas (or some other random holiday-I am seriously a poor listener at times) and had set it up back by the apple trees.  Um, awesome...except my kids were back there playing a few days ago and told me something about their being a camera in the tree.  I of course ignored their crazy talk and chalked it up to looney kids.  At least now our neighbor has a heads up that not only did he probably capture the deer but he probably also captured a bunch of hooligan neighbor children, thumbs in their ears, tongues wagging, while they bulged out their eyes and grinned like crazy.