My home must resemble the jungles of Africa, because this shit happened again!

I'm about to tell you another story about wildlife in the home. This blog was at one time a happy place where I told all sorts of diverse stories about my children. Now it just seems like all I do is talk about the critters that come through the doggie door of reptilian death.

Sigh.

Let me set the stage, at least as I understand it to be. Wednesday I get a frantic call from the wife shortly after I got to work. She was panicky, I was not, there may have been children screaming in the background. I've done the best I could to piece together what happened. Because I wasn't there to witness this first hand, I've commissioned a well-known Dallas artist to storyboard the events of Wednesday last. (This isn't bullshit, he's a real artist).


The day started like most days start. Kids up at 6:30 or 7. Like most days, the wife got up with them (thanks wife). I get up around 30 minutes before I have to leave. Get ready for work, play with kids, then head on out to cruise in my sweet-ass 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix. I'd tell you what color the car is, but I'm not sure what you call whatever color that is on my Pontiac.

I'm getting sidetracked. Around 8:20 or so, I'm out the door.














As I leave, the wife and kids say their bye-byes, or "bah?" or "dadda!" or "BALL!" or whatever it is that the collective three of them said when I left last Wednesday.



Everything occurring after this point is pieced together from the best available evidence.






The wife, realizing that she was about to embark on another day of chatting with toddlers reading children's books she's read four hundred times already, and changing poopie diapers, settles in with a cup of coffee.








The children, knowing that they now have another day of holding momma hostage to their book reading demands and requests for attention, conspire together to plan their attack. At this point, the boy says "guh" to the girl.



Shortly after the children conspire, they venture out to collect the necessary implements to execute their plan.










Time passes.

Nolan asks for his mother's attention.

The wife responds.

Nolan presents his mother with a snake. Yes, a snake. No, I'm not making this shit up.
The key difference between this snake and the snake the baby girl was carrying around in her mouth is that this particular snake is still alive. Nolan is just carrying a live snake around the house.

The events of the prior 6 and a half seconds process in the wife's head.

Nolan and his new snake friend continue to stare at momma waiting for her doting approval of baby boy's new friend.

Momma does not approve.

Momma's lack of approval bothers the boy, and apparently the snake too.

At this point, I get the aforementioned phone call from the wife explaining the events of the day.

I don't exactly know what's going on in my yard or with my cats that drives this Wild Kingdom experiment. What I do know is that this shit better stop soon, or I'm going to have a totally neurotic family problem going on at home.

I feel like I've gone to the well one too many times on this whole "my kids are playing with critters" theme. I'm sort of tired of writing about it. But it keeps happening, and every time it creates a sit-com-esque level of slapstick comedy gold that simply must be shared.

Oh -- my wife reminded me that my first comment to her on the phone following this event wasn't "is everything OK" or "are you/son OK". It was "did you get a picture?"

I'm always thinking about the reading audience.

Different child, same malfunction

Last December, I told you guys about an incident where the boy ended up with a dead mouse in his mouth. Today, as I'm "watching" the children while the wife gets ready to take them to mother's day out, I turn around to see my sweet baby girl holding a string in her mouth. This string looked odd. Long. A little rubbery.

Oh -- that's right. Now I remember. The "string" looked funny because it wasn't a string. My sweet baby girl was holding a dead snake in her mouth. I really must thank our lovely cats for bringing us these presents. The other day one of them (the one we rescued for certain starvation no less) brought in a dead bird! I don't really mind the snakes and the mice, but birds are disease ridden skyrats!

I'm getting off track here.

So I see this snake in my baby girl's mouth and I calmly ask her to take it out of her mouth. Fortunately, she obliges. Now she's getting the sense that she's done something wrong, so I try to reassure her that it's all OK and this is daddy's hangup.

Story ends here, right? I mean -- dad throws the snake away and we all go about our days happy as can be.....right?

Yeah no.

I have to show this to momma. I'll admit, I wasn't just motivated by an altruistic desire to educate my wife as to the details of this snake's cat-bite related death. So I knock on the door to the room where my wife is. I tell her the story while holding the girl. And then I show her the evidence.

It wasn't pretty.

This blog was never about censorship. I've been asked by some to reduce the language or the truthiness of this online dumping ground. I've always told them no. This is my blog and it involves my thoughts and experiences. So my position has always been that if you don't care for it, don't read it.

I've been forced into making an exception here. I was sworn to a promise that I would not tell you about how my wife freaked out, which in turn freaked out the baby girl who was now almost certain that she did something really wrong (even though she didn't). I certainly promised not to tell you about how this dominoed into making the boy upset thinking something was really REALLY wrong with his momma. I'm not going to write about this.

Because I promised. And I'm a promise keeper.