Manly Music

Liam likes to have his cousins over to play from time to time. I ride herd on them, making sure the computer doesn’t melt down with their incessant interactive games. And I unplug the dern thing and make them go outside when it’s nice, which it has been all fall. At this point, we have to hide the cord to the desk computer and make the laptop disappear altogether. When they realize their electronic dreams have been utterly and cheerfully defeated, they play outside for hours.

Playing with some rubber-band airplanes, Liam and Gus launched them into my prairie patch, which is loaded with black raspberries around the edge and most likely poisonous snakes, if you listen to Gus.

They came to me, wanting me to fetch the airplanes from the middle of the prairie patch. Nothing doing. I had just settled into the chaise with Chet on my lap and a cool drink, and I wanted them to fetch their own planes if they were going to launch them into the weeds. If I fetched the planes, they'd just send them right back into the weeds again. There was a lesson to be learned here.

I assured them that any copperheads in the grass would hear them coming and beat it, but that they were in more danger from thorns. So they went and put on long pants. I pretended not to be listening to their conversation, but was smothering laughter the whole time. Moms get good at that.
Gus: “There are snakes in there!”
Liam: “My mom says the snakes are all asleep.”
Gus: “They’ll bite us and we’ll bleed and die.”
Liam: “We’ll put on shoes.”
Gus: "Let's get weapons."

And then, from Liam: “Wait. Wait. We need some manly music.”
And he began to hum loudly, duh duh duh DUM DUM DUM na na DUM DUM DUM…no particular tune, but definitely manly.
Gus chimed in and they held hands and waded into the unknown, marching to a manly beat.

We found it!!
Good. Now don’t shoot it in there again. Snicker snicker. Or, do. I'll be listening. You little knuckleheads.Blogger is acting very wonky the last couple of days. It takes forever, like overnight, to post. It pretends to post, then takes it back. It won't show comments. Poor Bill of the Birds has been trying to post all afternoon. If you don't see a post from him, it's not because he isn't trying. Same goes for me.

The first few snowflakes are drifting down. Just put more bird seed out, and used a 2 x 4 to wedge the greenhouse door shut against the howling gray wind. I dumped out the Bird Spa and put it in the garage. Two red-breasted nuthatches came down and hovered over the spot where it had been. Bawww. Time to turn inward and drink tea.