Worms

Partly out of interest, but mostly out of the desire to not go to either the car museum or the train yard yet again, we took the kids to a Bug Fair last weekend. The Fair was pretty cool, consisting of tables upon tables with terrariums filled with things like this:

We got to do fun things like touch scorpions and hissing cockroaches. WonderWife™ and the Bean bravely ate some bugs sautéed with veggies. (It was not lost on me that I had an easier time getting my son to eat veggies when they were mixed with ants and crickets.) We all had a creepy-crawly good time. And at the end of the day, we left with some new additions to our family.

This is how I came to have worms living in my house.

On one of the tables at the Fair were tubs upon tubs of silkworms in various sizes for sale. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, maybe it was when I took Sprout to the bathroom, but WW™ bought a whole mess of them.

Our silkworm friends, their numbers totaling 25, were brought home and transferred to their new residence, an empty shoebox. The bottom of the box was lined with mulberry leaves, on which the worms were happily and constantly munching. The worms were horrible looking little creatures. They had a sickly white color and cracked skin that always looked on the verge of shedding. And they pooped. A lot. It wasn’t long before the shoebox was littered with tiny black feces pellets that rattled when the box was moved. The kids instantly loved their new pets.

Because we live with two cats, one of them more curious about the insect world than the other, the worms needed safe-harbor where they could be free to eat and shit.

This is how I came to have worms living in my bathroom.

While the worms fascinate most of the members of my family, I find them repugnant. Yet there they are right on the counter, squirming and munching and pooping as I brush my teeth. The only time they come out of the bathroom is when the kids watch TV. They park one of the boxes between them on the couch and pet the worms as if they were one of our cats.

I’ve been secretly hoping that the life of a silkworm is short. And it is...kind of. Soon they will grow fat and spin cocoons, hatching as moths. However, those moths lay eggs, out of which will emerge tiny silkworms and the whole process will start over again.

It seems as if the worms are going to be a part of this family for the foreseeable future.

Food Buggies

As I waited on line for a cup of Chex mix with crickets, I thought maybe this wasn’t a very good idea. We were at the Natural History Museum for Bug Fair (which, by the way, was sponsored by an extermination company without a trace of irony). Among the tables of unusually large millipedes, brightly colored butterflies, roaches that hissed and beetles the size of nightmares, was a man in a funny hat, cooking insects. WonderWife™ said that eating bugs happened to be on her list of things she always wanted to do. The Bean picked up on this and announced, “I’m hungry for bugs.”

I had no intention of trying them. As much as I love food, Anthony Bourdain I am not. But I was more than happy to procure the insect feast for the adventurous half of my family.

The Bean picked up his “food buggie” and popped it into his mouth. WonderWife™ quickly followed suit. A small crunch could be heard and almost simultaneously, my wife and my son were spitting out partially chewed cricket pieces onto the ground.

I give them both a lot of credit, especially the Bean. He’s a kid that I have to force to eat a chicken nugget, but will happily try a bug without any prompting. But I don’t think he’ll be eating bugs again anytime soon. Later that evening when we were playing outside, he turned to me and said, “Those bugs were awful!”

Here Kitty Kitty

WonderWife™ and I are masochists who whole-heartedly believe that between a toddler who’s deep in the midst of the terrible twos and a constantly screaming newborn we don’t have enough to do in our lives. So we decided to adopt a kitten.

Last year, my cat M died. M and I had spent 9 years together and his death left a big crater in my life, as well as our other cat Reesie. Reesie is the feline equivalent of a teenage socialite. She’s cute, but she’s very demanding. She may very well be the loudest, whiniest cat on the face of the planet.

In the wake of M’s death, we tried to adopt another kitten, but found the process to be surprisingly difficult, as if we were trying to bring home an orphaned Chinese child or something. At the county shelters, there was a lot of red tape and regulations and many of the private run rescues were hesitant to let us adopt a cat because the Bean was a toddler—despite the fact that we already owned a cat and she was surviving living with a baby just fine. We eventually got a little gray ball of fluff from a crabby woman with a voice that sounded as if her morning routine consisted of gargling with gravel after finishing two packs of smokes and a whiskey. Unfortunately, this kitten decided that our entire house was its personal litter box and after a few months of me having to fastidiously check every corner of every room for little kitten surprises five times a day, WW™ got pregnant and we were forced to give it back. Pregnant women and cat feces aren’t a great combination.

A year had passed since and because of Sprout’s arrival, I’d pretty much started to accept that we had cemented our status as a one-cat family. That is until our neighbors discovered a mom cat and a litter of kittens living in their crawlspace. Now if you suddenly have a picture in your head of me chasing WW™ around pleading, “Can we have a kitten? Can we? I promise I’ll take care of it!” then you’d be wrong. In her infinite wisdom WW™ realized that because of our past kitten experience we are probably on some kitten adoption black list and that this litter just may be our only chance at another cat. So despite our lack of sleep, cluttered house and frazzled nerves, she asked me if we should take one home, knowing full well what my answer would be.

I happily spent the greater part of my Saturday trapping one of the kittens and taking her to the vet. The little thing is infested with fleas and hasn’t yet had all of her shots, so she’s currently living in a crate in our bathroom. In between changing poopie diapers, trying to coax a smile out of Sprout and chasing the Bean around, I’ve been changing the kitten’s urine soaked bedding, providing clean water and scooping a surprising amount of poop for an animal that weighs less than 2 pounds. Jules and I can no longer speak to each other in our bedroom at night because if the kitten hears us, she starts to meow. As I type this, I’m listening to the constant rhythmic “mew mew” coming from behind the bathroom door.

But it’s all worth it because WW™ and I are totally falling for this little creature. And as soon as the kitten's out of quarantine, I’m sure Reesie will too.