Wednesday, June 28, 2006

The Birds and the Bees and the Bunnies

One of our kids favorite activities is chasing the local bunnies around our yard during the twilight hours. It's really comical to watch the two kids chase them around and the bunnies seem to enjoy it too. If they are chased out of the yard, it's only for a few minutes to catch their breath and then they're right back in the game. (Can you see the bunny near the dry creek bed in the lower right?)

My husband and I were watching the bunnies from the window (the kids didn't go out last night) and hubby says something along the lines of 'Hmmm...I've seen *that* dance before - this might turn into a biology lesson real quick'. I had a story to tell him...

A couple weeks ago, we met up with my BILs (brother-in-law) kids at the zoo. While we were in the insectarium, Matthew saw some kind of bug off by itself and then another one flew near it and kept going. Matthew mutters, "They're mating". I really wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly so I asked him what he said. "I said, they must be mating because there were two of them." Uninterested in any further study, he happily hurried off to the next group of bugs and left me standing there with my mouth hanging wide open. It slowly dawned on me where we were (an insectarium) and the realization that I might actually catch flies with that open mouth quickly shut my lips back together.

Now I must admit that we do watch a lot of Discovery and Animal Planet channels so I'm sure he's heard about mating a few times in his young life. But the ability of [what would the schools call it? Oh yes...] 'practical application' that he showed was quite surprising to me at his young 5 years.

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