10 August 2009

The New Pet!

Oh, boy! Elf was so excited about the new pet he was getting! There was much stimming, jumping, and all over shaking. Gleeful little shouts were ringing through the air. "Oh, I just can't wait to have my very own pet maggot!" Elf enthused.

Yes! You read that correctly.

YES! Mom is going to let him keep it.

YES! In the kitchen.

YES! She went and got the pet herself. She's crazy! But it was free, you know.

There were hundreds of them crawling about in the bottom of the trash can after collection time. D "innocently" asked her to bring in the cans, and that's when she saw it.

YES, I was about to puke. But yes, I called my boys out to check out what maggots really look like. There's something different about seeing their wriggly awfulness up close, rather than just reading about them in a book. And I couldn't believe Elf convinced me to let him keep one. As a pet. Do you know how "fun" it is to reach your arm way, way down in there to "collect" a maggot in the super bug observatory?

Ah, but Elf was having SO much fun watching this thing wriggle about on our window shelf. Those things are super-fast, which you would hardly expect. Thankfully, it was safe in the bug observatory lab and I went off to go about the (yewh) task of rinsing out the wriggly garbage cans before putting them in the garage again. D is laughing his head off that he is getting out of this task. Oh, and even more fun for him? Sneaking up behind me occasionally and scaring me with "maggot touch" to freak me out. Yeah, *that* was fun.

So off I go to rinse these wretched garbage cans. D comes out with the bug observatory. LOOK how the maggot can wriggle through the air hole! Here ya go, and he hands it to me. With the jumpy-quick maggot wriggling near my hand.

I'm screaming my head off, rinsing things with the hose and nearly puking all at the same time. I'm sure the neighbours heard and saw my weirdness but know better (by now) than to ask. Not that I would be able to explain that the commotion was about our pet maggot.

NO, I didn't get any pictures.

13 comments:

  1. You are a better woman than I am. Maggots freak me out totally and I would have had to disinfect the whole house--just in case.

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  2. The sooner it turns into a fly and flies away the better! MAJOR eeeeewwwwww~!

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  3. Oh my goodness!

    I do not feel well this morning and this could push me over the edge!

    You ARE such a good MOM!

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  4. LOL Bonnie, I was washing myself like a crazy woman after my experience. Those people with OCD must truly have NO fun, because it so wasn't funny at the time.

    Chris, I hate flies worse! At least maggots don't land on you suddenly or fly about. But yeah. Gross, huh?

    Bw, yeah, I'm a great mom LOL!! The maggot got away after all that, though, didn't he?!

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  5. Maggots are, as my wife has observed, a good reason why people used to believe in spontaneous generation... we've had them show up now and again as well.

    ~Luke

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  6. on the original CSI TV series the lead character had many pet insects, he too was especially fond of maggots as they are instrumental in giving clues as to when a person died

    Elf has a future in forensics perhaps

    I once helped my son nurse a giant water bug - this thing qualified as a rodent not a bug

    Jeffrey was determined to keep him and heal him

    Moms are the best :)

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  7. I feel your pain !!!!!

    In amongst the totally pink and lilac bedroom of Miss 4 is a small cage with her pet WETA in it.

    She pats it and all.

    I don't know which I would prefer, the weta or the maggot....

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  8. Luke, they show up because watermelon exists LOL!

    Dianne, around here, waterbugs are called "roaches!"

    Nikki, I saw a cartoon weta and they look *cute.* Do I need to look up what a real one looks like? Okayyyy...

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  9. Ok, they're kinda cute till they get in that weird "defensive position..."

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  10. My son has a thing that hold insects he catches. The problem is he places he bug in it and then walks away expecting it to feed itself. They always die. So now I call it the "Den of Death". When he goes to put another one in there, I say "Poor buggy. He's off to the Den of Death".

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  11. Sounds like my son. We had a slug for a pet for several weeks. Sometimes boys gotta be boys....

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  12. HEY, I found a big lot of those in the trash can this morning too! ::gag:: The big ol' garbage truck had just collected, so I hauled that thing back to the hose and Pine Sol'd the heck out of that thing!

    UM, I did not mention to my children the discovery OR the subsequent murder of many maggots.

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  13. LOL Den of death!

    Sandra, what do slugs eat? Several weeks is an awesome record in my book!!

    Noodle, that is just what happened to me. I saw the maggots after the trash was gone, all crawling around the bottom and sides. I think the maggots are the result of D cutting a watermelon at the beginning of the week so the juicy rinds are in the garage for a while.

    And you didn't share or give your kids a pet??! LOL

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Non-troll comments always welcome! :)

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