What Have We Done?!?

Evie and Sam love to spend their free time drawing on any scrap of paper they can find (those spiral-bound sketch pads are pretty much the best gift they can be given right now!) with crayons, colored pencils, or markers. Being the parent that is usually home when they are drawing, I have been given a rather large stack of some beautiful and very interesting art. Many StarWars pictures, several knights with shields and swords (and daggers and lances and arrows, oh my!), a whole myriad of monsters, castles, horses, birds, insects, cats, dogs, and let us not forget the self portraits. Yes, the pictures are wonderful, and I cherish them all.

And I thought I was doing a pretty good job of raising well-adjusted children. Until yesterday morning.

Evie was coloring at the table, and Sam came by to check on her progress. Normally, this small act would have started WWIII, but the whole morning had been surprisingly peaceful. I was at the sink doing dishes, so I could hear that they were talking, but I couldn't hear the conversations. I did catch pieces, thought, like 'ant' and 'shrew' and 'trail' and 'cat.' I thought maybe Evie was drawing the backyard or an area of the trail out back that does indeed have ants and those mole mounds. Oh, if only ...

She came up to me a little bit later, and said, 'Mom, I have a picture for you!'

'Oh, wow, Evie. That sure does have a lot of colors. Why don't you tell me about it!'

'Well, that's a shrew. The cats killed it and it's dead. And that's all the ants that are eating it. See their trail going back to their home?'

'Uh ... um ... Yeah, I see it. Uh, Evie, why does the shrew have a circle in the middle of it?'

I got the why-does-mom-take-so-long-to-figure-these-things-out look. 'Because that's where the cats ate the guts, Mom.'

'Oh. Well, where's the other foot, hon? Shrews have four feet, not three.'

Repeat of the above-mentioned look. 'Because the ants already took it to their home, Mom.'

'Oh. Well, why didn't the cats eat the whole shrew?'

'Because they caught a copperhead and ate it first so they weren't hungry anymore.'

'Oh, ok. Anything else?'

'Can I have a cookie?'

'Yeah, sure. Why not?'

Man, what kind of strange, strange children am I raising? At least her husband will thank me when she doesn't scream and jump on a chair if she sees a spider, mouse, or snake ...