Sarah's pet snail
Sarah found a tiny snail at school yesterday and decided it needed to come live with us. "He needs a family, Mommy." She has a very strong maternal streak in her - which is good - for just about anything she finds.... rocks, bugs, very small beans, and so forth. And she'll make a family for it if she has enough similar items. There's a mommy bean, a daddy bean, a sister bean and a baby bean. Mmmmm, yummy!

She talked about how she was going to change its diaper ("It's a baby snail, Mommy.") and rock it to sleep. Having peeked inside its shell, I thought it was a goner, but while we were in the grocery store, she piped up with "I can see his face!" Yep, it was alive. She showed everyone we ran into at the store her snail, she was very proud. She also told me the things it would eat: bugs, worms, hot dogs, etc.; and that it drank juice.

"He needs a house," she informed me on the way home. As I was unloading the car, she gathered up some small rocks, piled them on top of the snail in the middle of the floor and went off to play. A little while later, while she wasn't looking, I emancipated the snail into the back yard - I didn't think it wanted to live under all those rocks. Plus she would want to take it to bed with her and who knows what would happen then.

Later, when Pete got home, Sarah naturally wanted to show him the snail. When she discovered it missing she said, "Mommy! My snail is gone!" "He must have run away," I replied. I can see it now, in the years to come, when she reads this, she's going to accuse me of being a mean mom, throwing her pet snail away. *sigh*