Bug Spotted in Kitchen, Coaxed to Safety
Joshua loves bugs. He’s like the Jane Goodall of Entomology, except he’s not an old lady. And he’s three. We were recently at a family event when he found a creepy crawly sluggishly inching along outside in the cold. His initial “WHOOOOOAA!” becmae “Aaaaaaw. It’s cold!” and without hesitation he picked the Pine Seed Bug up and brought it inside where he excitedly showed it to everyone. As in: Every. Single. Person.
On Sunday, there were some Box Elder Bugs that had made it into some of the door jams and were milling around the kickplates. Joshua opened the door, saying, “Go! Go on! Go outside. Why aren’t you going outside?” He then began to gingerly prod the bugs out the door with, “Go! Ok! There you go!”.
One more aside before I get to the point: When we were in Moab, we found a stink bug while doing some exploring. naturally, Joshua picked up without hesitation and began, again, excitedly showing everyone. Another kid asked to see it and when Joshua handed it over, the kid quickly threw it to the ground and stepped on it. Joshua turned his little head up and, crushed, quickly descended from talking to big teared “cry-speak” (you know the kind– words start normally and then dissolve into rapid fire unintelligibility), “Aaaaaaww… he stepped on mybugandkillelblblblblblblblbl…”.*
A few minutes later, after calming Joshua, we walked over to the scene of the crime, only to find the resilient bug crawling out of the dirt. The poor guy was missing a couple legs but had survived, so Joshua happily picked it up again and quickly shuttled it to safety between some rocks.
All that just to illustrate one point and a couple pics.
Soooo… Saturday morning we found a small “lady-buggish” beetle on the kitchen floor. “WHOA! A ladybug!” A few minutes later, we heard him doing a little coaxing, “It’s ok, ladybug. It’s me- Joshua!” Here’s the incident in action:
Oh … we hope he stays this way!
Oh, last night was classic. MC received 2 frogs from one of Joshua’s cousins. We put them up in a little terrarium. MC saw a little moth/fly skipping through the air and I nabbed it and threw it in for frog food. Joshua erupted in tears (this was at about 8 and he hadn’t eaten- hungry + tired = temperamental) crying “Nooooo! the frogs will eat him! Noooooo!” I pretended to take the mothy thing out of the terrarium and opened the back door. “Are you taking it outside?” “Yep!” I said. The crying stopped, he wiped his eyes and smiled.
Priceless.
I love Joshua.
Thanks, Apes. You might not have picked up on it around here, but… we too!