Nature Lover

Our little girl is a nature lover. And a collector of nature items. So far her collection includes feathers, rocks, sticks, many acorns of different sizes, and pine cones. She fills her pockets with her collectibles on our walks. On Sunday, she said, "I can put these in my pocket." I noticed that what she was holding was very round and thought I should take a better look. Sure enough, it was rabbit poop!

She also loves to pick up bugs. On Saturday at the Sunken Gardens, she said, "Wook it Daddy, wook it, wook at what I caught." She had a bee in her hand! As Greg was trying to brush it off, it kept sticking to her, but thankfully it didn't sting her.

Yesterday as we were tearing out our garden in preparation for fall/winter, she showed me a giant grasshopper that she had caught. I wondered how she could have caught it. Since I was wearing my gardening gloves, I thought I'd take a better look. The poor thing had it's back legs pulled off - probably the victim of a neighbor boy. The grasshopper was more than happy to hang out on Avery and slowly crawl up her arm into her hair. She would just giggle and say, "He wikes me, Mommy. He wikes me!" We kept him overnight in our bug zoo and released him into the great outdoors today, after she held him again, of course.