Life with Boys

There's quite a "gang" of boys in the neighbourhood, most of whom are in the same grade at the same school, and seem to follow the sam fads.

We've had BeyBlades, DragonBallZ/GT, bikes, rollerblades, YuGiOh card battles - and now the latest is snake collecting!

We had a wonderfully mild evening yesterday, and the little groups of boys were our in force, overturning stones and logs and whatever they could find, seeking the harmless little garden snakes that seem to abound here. We're pretty rural, backed up against a forested mountain and with many open fields, so little wild things are common. We've got eagles and mongooses (no, not mongeese!), lizards and rodents. And snakes.

Well, I love snakes. I hate things with more than four legs, but snakes have none so they're OK. It may run in the family. My aunt used to keep a large aquarium full of egg-eaters and other slithery types in her room. Gran refused to go in there to clean - which was, perhaps, part of aunt's strategy to keep gran out!

So yesterday I joined in the search with abandon, advising on where to find them (under loose things, not stuff embedded in the ground with no gap to hide in), how to keep them (put some grass in the plastic box you're carrying, so they don't hurt themselves slithering on a surface they can't cling to), what to feed them (little container of raw egg, a couple of ants, a small amount of water).

Unfortunately one little monster got to our nearest hiding place and found a BIG one before my son did. FORTUNATELY his mom knows how to bargain - we swopped said monster 2 large pieces of home-made fudge for the snake, and all profited from the deal.

So right now at home there's a snake in an ice-cream container, hiding under a rock within grass tufts, perched on top of the piano.

Too cool.

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I guess if I had a daughter instead of a son, we'd be into ponies and princesses and pink or purple at this stage....