Friday, July 27, 2012

WILDLIFE (not referring to my children)



BIRDS

 A few weeks ago, in what turned out to be a vain attempt to get the boys to camp on time, I popped opened the van doors from inside the house and shooed the boys out to the car.   While I was gathering the backpacks, the lunchboxes and Big Mike, I heard the screams.

Oh the horror.  A bird was trapped in the van, and he had been there all night long.

And this bird had diarrhea.

OK, so I don’t really know what bird diarrhea looks like.  All I know is that my van was covered in a sh*t load of birdsh*t.   Black and white paintball style.

And even with all the van doors open, said bird, apparently in shock from having spent the night in the Odyssey and from having his glorious sh*tting spree interrupted by the triplets, vainly tried to escape by pounding his head into the windshield over and over, until Brian came after him with a broom.

The boys thought it was the best thing they’d ever seen.  And despite the ugly, horrible things I wished on that bird, he flew away unharmed. 

As I was cleaning the bird feces out of the air conditioning vents, my wonderful husband (who was suddenly too “late” for work to lend a hand) said out loud... to me... while I am cleaning BIRDSHIT out of tiny crevices, “Maybe if your car was cleaner this wouldn’t have happened…”

Really?? Perhaps insinuating that the bird was lured into my van by the 17 pounds of goldfish crumbs on the floors?  As if.  Well if he did fly in there to eat the crumbs, he did a really sh*tty job.  He could have at least made a dent.

 FROGS


Flash forward five weeks, to this morning.  The last day of camp. The boys and I are in the carpool line.  Michael and Charlie are in the middle row, the other two are in the back.

The counsellors come to the van door to collect my excited campers, and I popped open the van door closest to Big Mike.  The big boys climbed out, and suddenly I heard the counsellor shriek, pointing at Michael: “A FROG!! He had a frog!!”

I turned around, and I saw Kermit Kahn (a really ugly little frog) hanging out on the floorboard next to Michael’s seat.  “He had it in his hand and it jumped out!” shouted the counsellor. 

WTF. 

Did Michael really pick up a frog in our driveway and hold it for the half-mile drive to camp?

There was a bustle of excitement and the camp director herself jumped into the van – very excited to find Kermit Kahn for one of the camp classes that had been doing a unit on frogs.  She caught him in the back row.  I remained conveniently buckled into the driver’s seat, determined to avoid warts at all costs.

I was marvelling at her braveness when I realized in horror what my van look liked and what she was crawling around in looking for the frog.  (See above, re: Birds).   Stale pretzels, smashed snacks of all kinds, (never give a 1-year-old a cereal bar in the car and think that will end well), and a half-eaten piece of pizza (which I noticed later).  (Yes, pizza.  Thank you Cooper.  He later told me he had “forgotten” it.).

When she got out of the van, the camp director was so excited to have captured the frog that I am hopeful that maybe she didn’t notice the crushed Toast-Chee stuck to her knees.

Later, in an email from a friend whose son was in the camp group learning about frogs, I found out that the counsellors had been trying to catch a frog for weeks, and she told me the  campers were thrilled by “Little Michael’s” catch.  It was the perfect ending to their frog unit, fittingly, on the last day of camp.

Big Mike.  Kicking butt, taking names, and apparently catching frogs.  I am in so much trouble.

Anyway, you’d think that after the bird incident and the frog episode that I might do something about the van, seeing as it appears to attract wildlife.   Tomorrow is the day.  It really is.