Mortuss Rodents

"Mom!!!" My Princess Ballerina yelled to me, rushing in through the front door, her face flush with excitement, "You've got to come see this!"

She grabbed my hand, and started pulling me out the front door, running as fast as she could.

"It's just the cutest little thing I've ever seen!" she told me as she pulled me down my neighbor's driveway. "LOOK!"

She was pointing to a chipmunk, cute, tiny and very very dead.

"He fell asleep on Mr. Don's driveway! Isn't it cute?"

"Oh honey, he's cute, but he's not asleep.... he's dead."

"Dead?" Her eyes filled with concern. "What can we do with a dead chipmunk?"

There was not much that I wanted to do with a dead chipmunk, but I was pretty certain that there were tons of things that her brothers could do with one.

"Not much, and I think it'd be best if no one else found out about him. Let's just move his body to the woods and then he can be food for another animal. That way, he can be useful rather than if he's squished by a car on the driveway."

Or played with by some mischievous boys, I thought, but didn't say.

So, I went off to get the shovel. The other kids were inside, and I quickly snatched the shovel from the garage. I almost made it out undetected. Almost. As I was headed for the garage door, the basement door opened and out walked 3 more kids.

"Hey! What're you doing with a shovel?" Green Bottle Boy asked.

"uhhh....nothing....just moving some stuff." I replied. This was a kid who squealed with delight when we first found a dead squirrel in the backyard.

"Ohhh! My first dead squirrel!"

So, obviously, I didn't really want him to know about his "first dead chipmunk."

However, he didn't buy it and followed me out to the driveway. The cat was out of the bag, and I was okay with that, except that he noticed, right away, that the chipmunk wasn't dead. Great. It was slowly dying. Even better.

So, the 6 of them (they had a friend over) formed a semi-circle around the dying chipmunk, creating a kind of advance directive council for the dying. It was truly touching, except that the chipmunk was going to get dumped back in the woods no matter what they decided.

"We should take it to a vet." Lawyer/ Social Advocate boy said.

"Okay, I'll go get a Kroger bag to pick him up with," Said my Princess Ballerina.

"First of all, " I objected, "I'm not calling around to find a vet that treats chipmunks, and secondly I'm not willing to pay a vet that treats chipmunks."

"Let's lay hands on him and pray for him," Swimmer Girl suggested.

"AHH," I cut in, "NONE of you are touching him."

He, actually she (she rolled over on her back when I picked her up with the shovel), was really cute and it was sad. However, in the end we laid her to rest under a tree in the woods behind our house.

This was our third small animal death since living in this house. There was the infamous "first dead squirrel" and also a mole that my husband happened to stab while it was underground. Of course, the mole couldn't just die underground he had to climb out and do a dramatic heart grabbing death scene . And, of course, he waited until the next day when my husband was at work, making sure he left his bloody body out in our front yard where every kid walking home from school would see him. I swear he was just getting back at me for destroying his tunnels.

We had one small animal death years ago when we lived in the funeral home. A squirrel apparently ate some mouse poison and then climbed up into a large tree at the side of the building. I had no idea, as I passed under the branch, that there was a squirrel balancing above me, barely clinging to life. He fell down, missing me by about 1/2 a foot. I felt a bit like Chicken Little, only it was falling dead squirrels rather than falling sky.

I didn't want to dispose of him, so I left him for Rob. He didn't get around to it until dusk. He got a shovel and took the dead squirrel to the top of the hill that formed the front yard of the funeral home. Much to the joy of the guys hanging out at the bar across the street, his timing couldn't have been better. It was dark as he started digging the grave and grew darker by the minute. Suddenly, the lights, on a timer, flipped on, and there was a very defined silhouette of a guy digging a grave in the front yard of a funeral home cast all over Cheviot Road.

Since then, we've gotten wiser. We just throw them in the woods.

4-H: Raising Ducks in a Great American Suburb

Spring is here, and my children are, once again, thrilled for a new year of 4H. I like 4H because all my kids can go to one place for an activity. They like 4H because the meetings usually have cookies, and 4H projects mean getting new animals.

This year my oldest is raising Pekin ducks, studying archery, photography and learning how to bake quick breads. My oldest daughter is studying dog obedience, dog care, dog showmanship, raising pekin ducks, and also doing a project aptly entitled "the Horseless Horse". My middle son, the one of the green bottle, well... 4H is like a little bit of heaven for him.

Last year, we did the great Pekin duck experiment and it went so well, that we're doing it again this year. His second project, muskrat trapping, didn't go off too well. In fact, when I looked at the pictures on how to skin a muskrat, I decided he might need to "lose" the project book. As you might guess from my other writings, it's not difficult to get him to "lose" something, since most days he doesn't know where anything is.

So, this year he is doing: Market Ducks, Market Chickens, Dog care, showmanship and obedience, Exploring the Insect World, woodworking and some project on making nutritious breakfasts.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering how in the world did such a nice respectable suburban family end up allowing their 10-year-old son to raise a chicken and then go on to allow all three of our older children to raise ducks? This summer we'll have a total of 6 pekin ducks and 1 roasting chicken (doesn't that just sound yummy?) staying in our nice rectangular back yard.

Let me start this by saying that most of our neighbors really like us. At least we think they do. Our neighbor on the left likes the ducks and thinks they're funny. The neighbors on the right spend the summer in Florida, and I really don't think our ducks were the reason they bought a condo and put their house on the market.

We gave in to our youngest son last year for several reasons.

1) Raising duckies sounded better than skinning muskrats
2) I'm a sucker for cute animals
3) He loves hands-on science and agriculture, and he just thrives when we let him do stuff like this.
4) Our kids always love small animals for about 3 months and then tire of them -- perfect for a meat project because they get auctioned at the fair at about 2 1/2 months old.

Last year was a blast! Ducklings are cute! And, we watched them grow up. We watched the down change to feathers, got to see their ear holes when the down was gone and the feathers not full. We were able to watch the first time they figured out how to dive under water, and the kids loved to sit at the edge of the wading pool and let the ducks swim around their feet. I had no idea, until last year, that ducks go through "puberty" and their voices change! Over the course of one week they went from "peep peep" to "peep-quack peep-quack" to "quack!"

After they were gone, I did miss their quacking. It provided a unique soundtrack to my day, especially since it sounds kind of like maniacal laughter.

"Children, today," from outside you hear "wahh...qauck....whaa...wahhh", "you will do all your chores and do them well." (more maniacal laughter).

Also, suburban duck farming leads to other interesting situations. Like, for instance, driving with ducks. In our back yard, they don't really stink. We quickly learned that, when enclosed in a minivan with us, they stink. The easy solution, of course, is to open the van windows.

So, there we were, driving down busy old Galbraith road, windows open and 4 ducks quacking on the top of their lungs. The best times were when we stopped at stop lights. We all faced forward, not cracking a smile, as the people in the cars around us pointed and looked for the source of all the quacking.

I also learned that ducks get car sick in the heat. (That's what "don't travel well in heat" means). My son learned a few things about duck digestion, namely that a cricket eaten at home won't be digested by the time it's puked out at the Hamilton County Fairgrounds.

"Look!" He said, pointing at the cricket, "That must be Sunshine's puke. She's loves it when I feed her crickets."


Everyone assumed that it would be hard the day the ducks left. After a long discussion about what "processed" meant, it was difficult. I found my son in the back yard, hugging a duck and crying.

"I hate that everything has to die! It's just not fair!" He said.

However, several months later, he had a different perspective.

"Roasted duck is delicious."

I guess how fair life is might just depend upon what species you are.

Karen McCarron

As I write this blog today, my five year old daughter is quietly sitting on the floor sewing pretend dresses onto a wooden bear. Her work is occasionally interrupted by some whispered singing and pretend conversation between the bear and his "little pet lizard" sitting next to her. Her missing fingers and arm bones never even cross her mind, or mine for that matter. It's all peaceful, and I just can't understand how it can be any different. Yet, for many parents it is.

Several days ago a friend forwarded me an email that was disquieting to me in a way that probably no one else noticed. The family was begging for help from anyone who could advise them. Their daughter had been born with the same leg condition as our oldest daughter (although not as severe as what we deal with), and their insurance had denied their claim for a surgical fix. The insurance problem aside, what stood out to me as a problem was the perspective of the parents. For some reason, they were sure that their daughter's life was over if she didn't have this problem "fixed". Her only hope in life was to be made "normal", as though having something physically different or out-of-whack would mean that life had no value. Where did this idea come from? Who told them this lie in such a believable way?

And yet, today, I saw the same idea again. Karen McCarron "fixed" her autistic 3-year-old daughter, Katie, by suffocating her to death in a plastic bag. By taking her life, McCarron stated that she was sending her daughter to heaven in order for her to finally be complete and whole. Obviously she didn't understand that none of us here on earth are complete and whole, but all of us have a purpose here. The defense argued that she was depressed and insane at the time of the murder. I would argue that this former doctor had become so caught up in what could be done to 'remedy' her daughter that she never took the time to find the eternal qualities there that reflected the glory of God. That's enough to depress anybody (although few would take it to the extreme she has).

Then, not much later, I received a letter from a friend of mine overseas. Our family had been praying for a boy in an orphanage there, and she wrote about him in the letter. We had prayed for a family to adopt him, and the story turned out to be that his birth family came for him. What was sad, though, was that he was ever separated from them in the first place.

This little boy was born missing his fingers, and fairly severely near sighted. For some reason, his birth parents thought he was dead. I can only assume that the doctors at his birth predicted such a grim future that they never believed he would live, and they turned him over to the state, believing they were unable to handle his medical issues.

However, as the lawyer for his orphanage began to work on his paperwork to free him for adoption, they made one last contact with his birth family. They were shocked to learn that he was alive and well, and came to see him. Now he is a happy healthy kindergartner whose disabilities are but a little bump in the road.

Then I think about my beautiful daughter who's quietly playing next to me. She was tagged with so many problems: heart problems, hand problems, developmental problems, depression (even though she was an infant!). Now she's a happy, healthy and silly 5 year old girl.

So, I ask myself again, how does this happen? How does a being that was made in the image of God, a being that reflects his eternal goodness , come to be seen as something so bleak? The only answer I can come up with is that too many people have listened to the Father of Lies. Satan can whisper the negative and we believe it so readily, and so quickly.

To quote Helen Keller, "It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision."

I've begun to believe that humanity no longer has a vision.