Family Pet?

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We have a new pet in the family.  Temporarily, that is.

We’ve actually been petless for quite some time now – save the 5 days we tried to incorporate a puppy into the family last December, which our youngest son turned out to be extremely allergic to, prompting the dog’s return to her previous home.  Before that whole debacle, it’d been over three years since we’d had a dog in our family.  And we’ve missed having a family pet, terribly.  Just this past week, I was beginning to wonder if we are quickly coming up against our first Beta Fish adoption.

So, today while I was out working in the yard with the kids tooling around with me–I heard them exclaim with utter excitement, “look, Mom!  We found a caterpillar!  Can we keep her?  PLEASE??? Can we keep her for a pet???”

The said “caterpillar” is actually a bright green inch worm which the older two promptly named “Halloween Emily.”

I consented to the temporary housing of the insect for the kids’ pure joy at watching “her” inch along, back arching and expanding, sticky little wormy feet grasping hold of the leaves, sticks and rocks we placed in “her” new, temporary glass bowl home.

But Halloween Emily will be set free tomorrow.  As much fun as it was today to watch all three of them inspecting their “pet”, and carefully selecting a variety of leaves from our yard to feed and house her, I can’t resist the opportunity to teach them the final Halloween Emily lesson.  That wild creatures must be allowed to be wild.  Even inch worms.

So, tomorrow morning, if Emily is even still captive in her glass bowl home, we will collectively and with great pomp and circumstance, let her go.  We will talk about what inch worms need to be healthy and happy, and why living in a glass bowl is no life at all.

What discovery have you made with your children lately?

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Filed under Kids, Living

Tags: at-home science, family pets, inch worms, teaching children about pets