..... that's what my little girl is made of right now!!
As I chronicle her desire to learn about her world, I sense that my journey along with her will quickly take me to unfamiliar and maybe even uncomfortable places. However, since I don't want to squelch her interest in something, I'm going to do my best to get over my discomfort!
With that said, today I will be sharing about her recent pets. This little girl wants a pet. BADLY. A puppy or kitten would be ideal, but since we live in a rental home whose owners are much less into us having animals than she is, anything furry is out. So she decided to bend the rules on what does and doesn't constitute a pet.
We found a spider in our kitchen. One of those big ones with a body so fat that you doubt your ability to even squish it, should you ever summon up the courage to attempt it. Mark was at work and not due to return for hours. So I did what any other terrified person would do - put a jar over it and left it there for Mark to deal with later! Somehow, over the next couple hours, I was talked into keeping it in the jar. We looked up what kind of spider it was (a wolf spider, whose venom, I learned, is poisonous but only very mildly; not dangerous to people, phew), and attempted (failed) to catch bugs for it to eat in its new home. We kept the spider for three days. Anna carried it around in its jar, read books to it, slept with it next to her bed, and was just pleased as punch to have acquired a little pet. When it became apparent to us that the spider (who Anna named, to my absolute horror, 'Anna') would not eat any of the bugs we caught, we released it back into our yard. This launched a minor grieving process ...
... until -- we found the lizard! In almost exactly the same place as we'd found the spider, no less - a sure sign that we should consider a second pet. The lizard needed a larger home than a mason jar, so we dug out Anna's little fish tank (which, before you suggest it, will shortly be brought back into use as a fish tank to house a fish or two, since we desperately need a real pet!). Mark helped her look up the lizard on a classification chart, and we determined it to (maybe!) be a Four-lined Skink, also known as a Plestiodon Tetragrammus. Again, the fish tank accompanied Anna wherever she went, and little lizard was introduced to all of her toys. Again, though, it didn't seem to want any of the food that our research promised it would love. So, after a few days, back outside it went.
We have since caught and released two other forms of spider, and today she asked about the colour of blood of both spiders and fish. Back to the computer we went (one day I will be on the ball enough to go to the library and get books out for her rather than just consulting google!), and went through these two pictures, at her request, in pretty significant detail:
We went over the pumping action of the heart, pointed out the heart and brain areas in each picture, and translated this information to her own body.
And now that she is awake, this post is done :)
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