Snips and snails and puppy dog tails

Did I scare you? Sorry. You see, yesterday I was cleaning the house while Lawton was at school and I was dusting this cabinet in our living room.

I got behind the recliner, looked down and saw Lawton's rubber snake laying so conveniently, so scarily here. And I smiled. You see, I recognize this snake because he loves to take it by its tail and whip it around like a lasso, mostly right in front of Carolina's face. He hasn't hit her with it . . .yet. I'm not sure how it ended up here, but I don't think he was trying to scare me - he's not that smart and witty. . . yet.

And then I walked across the room and was dusting this shelf, just mere seconds later.

I then discovered this little salamander, one Lawton also likes to twirl around by the tail. Poor guy. He must have taken flight and Lawton couldn't figure out where he had flown to. Or maybe Lawton knew and was too afraid to tell me. I think this was a Chuck-E-Cheese "purchase". (We've been twice)

These things make me smile - he's my little boy and I'm glad that he likes snakes and salamanders - however, I'm not sure he's the type to capture real ones, though. This is the kid who stopped eating a Rice Krispy treat Wednesday night because his hands were "all gooey."

These creatures also remind me of a story I haven't shared with my blogging buddies . . .

This past April, I was about thirty-eight weeks pregnant, so I decided to stay home while Chad went to church to a parenting seminar on a Tuesday night. (I just couldn't sit there on that hard pew, okay?) Anyways, earlier in the day I had washed Lawton's sheets and had set his heavy denim comforter on the floor. I was finally getting around to putting sheets back on the bed that night. Lawton was being silly and had closed the shutters (it was pretty light outside) so the room was somewhat darkened and shadowy. I lifted the comforter to put it back on the bed and noticed one of Lawton's creatures laying on the floor. And in about a half of a second, I went through all of his "animals" in my mind and didn't recognize the shape or size of this "thing" that was on the floor. So I just flipped on the lights to confirm my suspicion and realized that this "thing" wasn't the right color of anything we owned, either.

I quickly grabbed a huge Rubbermaid tub that I had bought that day (for nesting purposes ;) ) flipped it over and trapped the huge lizard that was in Lawton's bedroom. The lizard that had been snuggled up in his comforter. The lizard that was in my house. The big, fat, shiny, slithery lizard that could have possibly crawled up and read a bedtime story that night with us. EEEKKKK! But you know what? Amazingly I kept my inner school-girl scream and shudders all inside so that Lawton would not pick up the fear that I obviously had. (He had only been sleeping in his big boy bed for about three or four months and I didn't want to take the chance of freaking him out.) I then calmly went and texted Chad. "There is a live lizard in Lawton's room." He immediately stepped out of church and called me. You see, in his mind he pictured me and Lawton standing on the bed, screaming and holding each other, the lizard slithering all around. (Which is what I wanted to do!) Anyways, Chad came home immediately (because I wasn't 100% sure that I had captured it, but wasn't going to lift up the lid to check and see) to save the day. "It's big. Really big. And shiny. And slithery. I can't do anything until it is out of the house!" I told him.

We decided that the best P.O.A. (plan of action) was to slide some cardboard all the way under the tub and then flip the tub over. It worked - and thankfully I had trapped the lizard. And you know what, it was big. It was probably nine inches long from head to tail and had a very fat body (about an inch) and was a coppery color. We released it into the wild and Lawton never knew. Seriously.

*Later Chad saw a whole family of lizards out by our barn and I even saw one peeking out from our gutters this summer. But the question is - HOW did it get in our house - and under Lawton's comforter. Heebie jeebies!