This little boy loves pretty much all of God's creatures. Maybe excepting bot flies and naked mole rats. But certainly he includes black widows and snakes in his all-encompassing love.
Exhibit A
A couple months ago, we found our first bark scorpion in our house. Now, this is both a very common scorpion and the most venomous scorpion in North America, so we wanted to be sure the kids could identify it and avoid it and tell an adult if they found one. So we put it in a glass jar to show them in the morning.
First thing the boy asks, "Can we put holes in the lid so he can breathe?"
I said, "Honey, we are just going to flush it. This one can't stay around, it could hurt the kids or the pets!"
His eyes widened in concern, "Mom!!! We can't kill it! It's an ANIMAL!"
"Sweetie, it can't stay around here. These are very poisonous and could hurt Bandit or S'mores or the kitties."
"Well....", he looks around and his eyes settle out the window, "We could set it free..."
He looks at me to gauge my reaction and seeing my face set to say no, hurriedly finishes his sentence with:
"....in Mexico!!!"
Ok, son. I'll run it down first thing Monday morning.
EPILOGUE:
Before we had a chance to get rid of the scorpion, Max's buddy Colton knocks the jar off the counter while climbing up to get a banana.
It shatters.
The scorpion is MIA.
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Three days later, Avril finds a dead bark scorpion in a nearby kitchen drawer.
Exhibit B
A few weeks later, we discover a hoard of black widows around the outside walls of our house. So naturally, Dad and Roman decide to capture a couple, create a habitat and feed them live insects. Like flies, moths, crickets, roaches, other spiders...
Meet Phoenix and Onyx, Roman's pet black widows.
He brought them to school as a show and tell and almost cried every time the container got jostled- because he was worried they would get hurt.
