Wednesday, April 29, 2009

How baby toads and ponies are made

I am not prepared to talk about the birds and the bees. I certainly wasn’t prepared to talk about the toads.
My kids are 8 and 6, and I would like to think that I will never have to have that talk with them. Mainly, that is because my wife is in charge of all things technical and clinical.
When I am tasked with real-world issues, in particular ones that deal with the human body, I often try and come up with explanations that simply allow the conversation to end. For example:
CHILD: Daddy, what would happen if we didn’t make it to the bathroom.
ME: God would stop making ponies.
But on occasion, I am thrust into the real-world, real-time job of having actual heartfelt discussions on matters such as these with my kids. Such was the other day during the Earth Day even at Hopelands.
As we were walking around the pond, we heard the distinctive high-pitched sound of Southern toads, calling out amorously toward one another around the bay. Whenever we hear animals calling, my kids and I will stand very still and try to find the animal. This is easy with, say, a cow. But toads and frogs can get tricky.
We went into “listen for it” mode, in which for some reason you bend your knees slightly, put your hands out to your side and cock your head. I have no idea why people do this.
But you know that if you went into the stance in the middle of a crowded mall, most everyone would stop to see if they were missing some important sound.
So we wait for the sounds to pop up again. Immediately, Allie spots our target. “Daddy, in the water!” Parker sprints over to see where she is pointing.
And then he says, “Hey, they’re all riding piggy back.”
At that point, a couple walking a few steps ahead of us stop in their tracks. I am sure they are thinking, “Oh, we’ve gotta see how this one plays out.”
Parker turns to me and says, “So what are they doing, Daddy? Are they playing?”
The gentleman looks at me, waiting for my answer. He is clearly enjoying this.
“Well, son, they’re...”
A small voiced chimed. “Mating. Breeding. They’re making new toads, Parker.” Clearly, Allie had this under control.
“That’s right,” I said, “they’re making baby toads. So let’s leave them alone to... do... their... thing.”
Parker was not ready to move. First, he took some of the duck food he had and set it in front of each of the pairs. The gentleman and I surmised one might enjoy a sandwich or something of that ilk at that moment. Who knows.
And then Parker decided to get a closer look, in particular how exactly the toads were stuck together. After a brief discussion on how we should never do that again, we watched for a while as the recently detached male called out loudly for his lady toad friend.
We watched his throat swell out each time he called, and saw him navigating through the reeds in his quest. We eventually moseyed on down the trail, but I would like to think they were reunited.
My kids were very excited about the find, and told plenty of folks for the rest of the day about it. Nothing like livening up a grocery store trip with a hearty, “WE SAW TOADS MATING!!!” to ring through the aisles.
The fact of the matter is that it is just life, and I always want my kids to learn about the way the world works without mystery or intrigue where it serves only to confuse matters. It’s OK that they know how baby toads gets made. And why God makes ponies.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

For the birds

So I get out of a meeting the other day and head back to my office. There, on my keyboard, is a note: “Call your wife – there’s a bird in the house!”
I then noticed I had a text message on my phone: It read “There is a bird in the house! HELP!!!!!!!”
Have you gotten the idea that my wife is less than fond of birds?
I called her, and, taking breaks between laughs, I asked her what the bird status was.
“I have no clue. I left.”
She did not see the humor in the situation that I did. And partly, I think, she was a little miffed at me for having allowed the bird invasion to begin.
It started a few months ago, when a wren began building a nest in our garage.
When the first few pieces of pine straw came in through a cracked window, my wife suggested I close the window and redirect the nest construction project.
I responded by saying, “Look, kids – a bird is making a nest in the garage!!!”
Needless to say, you can’t really stop the nest process once interested kids are involved. Not exactly fair play on my part.
And then about a week ago, we heard the tiny little chirps of baby birds.
The kids were excited that they were going to get to see them leave the nest, and my wife was excited that she was not going to have birds swooping in and out of the garage every time she went to her van.
At that point, our birds showed an uncanny knack for survival.
When they left the nest, there were two ways they could leave the garage: Through the window at the back of the garage, or through the garage door.
Simply hopping out of the garage door seems the easiest, most direct route.
It’s also the quickest path to an army of neighborhood cats that had begun circling my garage.
So the window was the survivor’s approach. Only problem – the window was rather high for baby birds.
It was going to take a few days of learning to fly before they were able to get up there.
So they took dominion over our garage.
The adults were swooping in and out of the window, I assume trying to teach the little ones how to fly, how to not get eaten by a cat, etc.
And this is where I am guessing the security breach occurred.
As best I can tell, someone left the door from the kitchen to the garage ajar, and one of the adults, tired of swooping out the window, decided to investigate. In doing so, the tiny, harmless wren created an evacuation normally reserved for hazardous chemical spills.
In short order, I had arrived to save the day.
My son was eager to assist me. My daughter? She was fine staying back with Mom.
We entered the house slowly, mainly because I was still stopping every two steps to double over laughing.
When we entered the house, I saw the bird flitting about in our sunroom.
Parker and I planned our strategy, and it was one of the more complex in the history of such missions.
It involved:
1. Go to sunroom
2. Open door
3. Watch bird fly out
And there you go. Practically Navy SEAL stuff, huh?
My wife reluctantly admitted that she PROBABLY could have handled that task, and that a wren was probably not going to take her down.
Eventually, the baby birds did learn how to get up to the open window, and all of the birds have vacated the garage, which means there is just one thing left to do: Shut that window.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Oh, the pain

It started about 6 a.m. I awoke, thinking that the tingling in my stomach was the excitement of knowing it was almost time for the kids to get their Eater baskets. Ever since my daughter was a little girl, the Easter Bunny has left the baskets outside, because, quite sensibly, she did not want a giant rabbit sneaking in her room as she slept.

So I woke up and headed out to my car, where the Easter Bunny leaves the baskets each year and relocated them to the front porch. I was heading back to bed when I noticed that the tingle was growing. Easter excitement!

About halfway up the stairs, someone, from somewhere, punched me in the stomach. I did not see the person, but it was a well-placed punch that dropped me to a knee. Clutching the bannister, I steadied myself and made my way up two more steps when I was punched again. Note to self: Ask pest control company to spray for phantom gut punchers.

Eventually, I made it back to bed. I figured the best cure for such an ailment was to curl in the fetal position and moan. This failed to wake my wife. Or, more appropriately, failed to wake her enough to roll over and tell me that I was the sickest anyone had ever been.

Eventually, I was able to drift back to sleep, despite having the worst pains anyone on the planet had ever endured. After a short while, my kids came in and decided to jump on the bed and announce that it was Easter. This was enough to wake my wife. She looked over and said, "Uh, are you OK?" I am not positive, but I think she might have been tipped off that I was slightly ill because I was clutching my stomach, rocking back and forth making growling noises.

I composed myself long enough to tell my wife - the woman who spent roughly 4,000 hours giving birth to our children - that I was experiencing the Worst. Pain. Ever. She responded by taking the kids downstairs, which would have been a really callous response had an alien shot out of my stomach a short while later. Which it didn't. Of course had it shot out of my gut, I am sure she would have felt guilty. Or, just to one-up me, she would have said something snarky like, "Oh, yeah? Come see me when TWO creatures come out of you." Always a competition.

After a little bit longer in bed, I noticed that the stomach cramps seemed to be subsiding. Hey, I thought. Maybe this was a temporary thing! Maybe I'm getting better! Hey, why are the cramps moving ... up ... up ...

Let's skip to the part where I am underneath a bath mat, sweating profusely, feebly hitting my hand on the ground in hopes that my wife will hear me and come find out that I actually am somewhat sick. As an added touch, I whispered, "Jeeeeeeennnnn ... " and reached my hand in the air. Quite dramatic.

Eventually, my daughter came into the room, presumably to use the bathroom and not to save me. "Daddy, why are you under the rug?" "Get ... Mommy ... " was all I could muster.

My wife came in and agreed that I had seen better days. We had several big Easter plans for the day, including Easter lunch at my parents' house and a neighborhood cookout that evening. I told my wife that I would be OK and that I would fight through it and grace everyone with my presence. I was a gamer.

"Uh, don't take this personally," she said, "but no one is going to want be around you."

I took it kind of personally.

By the end of the day, the breakout of my day was:

-- 49 percent: on bathroom floor, quivering, groaning

-- 49 percent: in bed, quivering, groaning

-- 2 percent: Walking downstairs to make sure anyone who was there knew I was quivering, groaning

When I woke Monday morning, I was pleased to find that I had healed. The only pain was from lying down for the majority of the previous 30 hours, which sounds like it would be fun until you do it. My wife asked me how I felt, and I told her that I was fortunately feeling much better. "I guess it was just a one-day thing," I told her. It's nice when the pain goes away quickly. Like after you give birth, right?