Good night dead wasp.
Tonight Iris is asleep with
- Licky Puppy: a soft toy that came with the book Dear Zoo from her adored cousin Kay for her birthday.
- Good Puppy: a soft toy she's had since she was newborn, it used to be called Iris's Pink Dog "Teddy" and Hazel used to tuck it into her tiny hands before she could let go of anything and so she'd hit herself in the face with it in a confused way.
- Her bear: who may have gained the name Big Teddy today.
- A baby doll 10cm tall.
- A dead icneuman wasp in a plastic container: it's been part of the bed contingent for 3 nights now, each night we open up the container, say "good night dead wasp" and close it again.
- And a printout of the elephants below.
Okay, so the first three are soft and fluffy and nice to cuddle, the baby is teeny tiny and cute, and the elephants are very new: I was checking my email after dinner and Iris came over and asked me to "make your 'mputer to show elephant" so I went to http://flickr.com and searched for 'elephant'. I found the picture above which was taken by someone called l8tebird of a herd of elephants crossing a river. Iris was enchanted with the elephants large and small, especially the smallest one who, she says, is "just peeking out" of the water, and asked for elephants on paper so I printed it out and gave it to her.But why would one want to sleep with a dead wasp? Perhaps I'll be telling this story as she graduates with a PhD in Entymology. Perhaps she was impressed with the mileage Hazel got out of her dead insect pet.
posted by Susan Harper at
9:09 PM
3 Comments:
That sort of thing can stick, you know. I started being obsessed with rocks, gemstones and fossils well before age 3, and now I'm driving an Ion Microprobe analysing 4.3 billion year old zircon crystals.
(Zane, medievalist/Kaos associate of Sean's from ChCh. I think I met you at a picnic lunch in the botannical gardens a few years back.)
I remember you. We had a conversation at an archery practice about aesthetic goals in handwork: pre-industrial striving for perfection and post-industrial avoidance of it.
Great list! My children had not (until recently) embraced sleeping with stuffed animals. It was usually plastic Sherriff Woody toys, secret decoder watches, or books. A trip to Build-a-Bear workshop, however, has changed their world. Also, we've had a sudden increased interest in insects of late--I wonder if we'll be soon be tucking in bugs in containters, too!
P.S. I loved these lines: "telling this story as she graduates with a PhD in Entymology" and "impressed with the mileage Hazel got out of her dead insect pet."
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