Last night was a really hard ‘teachable moment’ for my middle son and I. On the weekend he explored Current River Dam and found a snail, which he brought home to be his ‘first pet’. He was so excited and immediately wanted to go back to find tadpoles and minnows to be friends with his snail and build up his pet collection. My kid is a ‘collector’ (hoarder) of grand proportions, so I wasn’t surprised that he was enthusiastic about getting more pets. I’ll be honest, I don’t know a lot about aquatic pets. We had fish off and on for years and the boys mother has had a turtle for about 25 years now, but that’s really about it. So, last night my son and I had some solo time and we decided to take a net and go get some minnows. We took a walk down to Boulevard Lake, walked the shore line for quite a while (I managed to avoid the soaker, but my son was pretty much wet from the knees down) then spent some time at the park before walking out onto the boat launch/dock area. My son was SO excited when we spotted a school of minnows hanging out in the shade and was pretty ecstatic when we caught some. We put three into a container of water and he proudly carried them home (while I carried him home on my shoulders, of course). He took his container to the tank with the snail and spent a few minutes introducing his minnows to ‘Buddy’ the snail. For the next hour, he would pop up every few minutes and run over to the tank to talk to the snail and the minnows. After a while he went to watch turtle videos on youtube (his next pet apparently) and half an hour later he came out to chat again. As he sat down to look at his pets I heard him scream, ‘BUDDY WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!’ and the wail that followed would have broken any parent’s heart. In fact I think if anyone had heard him, they would have been kicking in the door and calling the police. I ran over to find that ‘Buddy’ had assumed the minnows were dinner and had eaten the fins from two of them and was currently latched onto the third.
It took a lot of comforting, a lot of tissues, a phone call to mom, and a long talk about the circle of life before my son was calmed down and able to go to sleep. There was a moment where I thought ‘Buddy’ was going to be unceremoniously removed from his tank and tossed outside, but thankfully cooler heads prevailed. This morning we decided that we would, again, take a trip to find minnows this weekend but we would leave ‘Buddy’ (who is now going by the name ‘Jaws’) in his own tank and let the minnows have a new tank. It was a pretty horrific evening for both of us but a good, if hard, lesson for both of us as well. For him, it was the typical ‘circle of life’ lesson where some things eat other things in order to survive and it’s not always pretty. For me, it was: learn what will eat your kid’s pets and what the pets eat before bringing more pets home!
Our morning show host, John Ongaro suggested I introduce my son to Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I’m hoping I can find some animals being eaten without having to endure the questions that would inevitably come from having to watch the mating process ahead of time…
https://youtu.be/exBZC7-V4sY
