Pets

My oldest son (6) is what I would affectionately call a bookworm.  He is rarely to be found without a book in hand.  First thing in the morning, you'll find him in the easy chair in the living room with a book.  Throughout the day, he'll be walking around with one, copying text or ideas out of them, reading them to his brother (or trying to play teacher with lil' bro), he'll bring one out to the hammock or garden and read while I'm trying to get some work done outside, he'll bring a whole stack of them on a car trip, and even after light's out it's not unusual to find him up reading with his bed light still on.  I think he takes after me.  :)  He also absorbs their contents with amazing alacrity.  He recently earned a book about beginning to play chess, and by the end of the day knew enough about the pieces and moves to play a pretty good game.  He enjoys a good adventure story (the Imagination Station series is his favorite), and loves puzzles books, he's currently reading Exodus in his bible, but he really loves non-fiction...especially if it has to do with science.  The other evening he pulled Nathan's giant "The Scientists" book off of the hall shelf with the intention of reading through it.  I think he made it though the first page, copying down some notes, and then we had to go to bed.  He reads through some of them so quickly I don't even know he's done it, and others he reads and re-reads and then even wants to read with me.  I tried to discover if he was actually getting what he was reading, or if he was just skimming through, and after quizzing him over a couple books (both comprehension and vocabulary words), I have to admit that he's understanding and remembering most of what he reads.  One of my larger concerns when they closed the schools and shut the library down due to COVID-19 was how I could keep enough books around for him to keep reading.  Fortunately his aunt (who teaches 4th grade) had ordered some books for her classroom and was willing to share, so he was able to get some new material.  :)  

That's great Heather, you are thinking, what does this have to do with a blog titled "Pets"?  Well...in some ways I think books are Elijah's pets.  And so far, our April and May have been filled with a variety (and rapid succession) of books.  They have also be filled with a variety and rapid succession of biological pets...mostly owing to son number two (age 4).  I think perhaps the best birthday present we have ever given Case was a little $2.50 bag filled with ten or so tiny frogs.  I actually used them to decorate his birthday cake, which resembled a frog pond.  This kid loves frogs.  His affection and excitement doesn't stop at frogs, however.  Any creepy, crawly, scaly, or fuzzy thing, on land, in the water, or in the air, is a source of ecstatic excitement for him.  The second best present I think he's received is the Smithsonian Animal Book.  This book is only five months old, and the spine portion and cover are already starting to wobble and weaken.  He takes this book from room to room constantly.  Mommy has to sit on the couch and pretend to "fish" for all six pages of fresh water and deep sea fishes found in it's pages.  I might have the amphibian and worm pages memorized.  He sleeps with this book.  That's how much he loves it.  It is fun, however, when we are out playing in the yard (every day is a biology lesson!) and he picks up an crane fly or oak gall and says "Mommy, what's this?" and I tell him what it is and then add, "there's a picture of that in your book."  The last time we were at Bass Pro he was stationed by the fish tank educating anyone who came near enough to hear him about what each and every fish in the tank was called.  I think he references going fishing at least once a day.  He always wants to go for walks to try to find fish, frogs, turtles, or anything else he can lay his hands on, carrying his battered old plastic minnow bucket down the road.  And of course, if he catches them, he wants to keep them (other than the big frog, which he wanted to eat).  That brings us to the pets.  In addition to Spots the spotless dog and our three cats, at one point in April we were also the proud caretakers of 5 tiny tadpoles collected from a mud puddle, a freshwater clam (yes, and it was alive), a snail, a slug, a bottle calf name George, several worms, a butterfly, and a whole clan of cutworms.  The tadpoles, regretfully, were tough to keep alive.  You have to change their water (non-chlorinated, of course) every few days, and even though they had clean water and plenty of boiled lettuce to eat, their numbers decreased until we were down to one, and then he didn't make it either.  Fortunately, the "newness" and excitement of each pet wears off after a few days, so Case really didn't miss the tadpoles when they were gone.  "Snaily" as he was affectionately called, lived for a couple of weeks in a giant plastic pretzel jar before I dumped him out in the yard.  He and Mr. Slug and their families are probably what's been out in my garden eating my broccoli plants.  The huge clam always kind of creeped me out a little, so one day I finally told Nathan that he needed to go back to the creek (seriously, how exciting is a clam?), and I think the cutworms just devoured all their lilac leaves and then got set outside and forgotten on too hot a day.  The butterfly I made the boys let go after a short stay in our butterfly jar, and the worms are either living happily in our worm farm bin or in the cottage cheese tub in our refrigerator that holds the fishing worms.  We still have George the calf, and he still gets his bottles of milk every day.  Although pet our numbers decreased for a time, they have now increased again.  We have added Mr. Toad and Mr. Frog to our menagerie.  Mr. Toad is really quite interesting and easy to care for.  After living a week in a plastic bulk peppermint container, we created him a bigger and better habitat in a plastic tote.  It's fun if you can watch him eating a worm, but since he's a toad, he also likes to burrow, so he spends a lot of his time hiding.  On Sunday we took a walk to two of the ponds in the pasture around our house and came home with a little frog.  He has joined Mr. Toad in the habitat, and likes to sit by the water dish, but I think his time in captivity will be short.  Frogs don't make very good pets because they are always trying to jump out of the box every time the lid comes off.  I refuse to have a frog hopping around inside my house.  So those are "Case's" pets.  Daddy says he needs to be better about taking care of them each day (and not letting Mommy do it) before he can get chickens.  After that, he really wants a milk cow.  :)  

This brings us to our last and perhaps strangest pet:  Sourdough.  Yes, I am calling my sourdough starter a pet, because you have to feed it - sometimes twice a day.  I really enjoy baking bread, and I've done quite a bit of it, but sourdough is one type I have not attempted before.  Why am I making sourdough?I'll be honest, I've never really been that big of a fan of sourdough bread when I've tried it, finding it dry and the "tangy" flavor a little off-putting.  However the stores are out of yeast, my small stash has be used up, and Friday night "homemade pizza night" must go on!  I know, I could use something else for the crust (and I have), but I thought I'd give the sourdough route a try anyway.  Imagine my consternation when I started looking at sourdough recipes (both starters, and recipes made from starters) and discovered that many of them still call for yeast.  What's the point of making sourdough if it still takes yeast?  I needed some yeast-less bread, so the sourdough starter I made is the real deal (my recipe here).  I just happened to have a couple of cups of whole rye flour in the freezer, so I added a little water and put it on the counter to see what happened.  Now it's day five and I have a pretty vigorous little bubbling concoction in my jar.  I think it's about to the point where I can begin to use it and refrigerate the starter.  Near as I can tell, when yeast is added to the recipe with the starter it's because they are hoping to speed up the process and not have to wait forever for the sourdough to proof naturally.  With a little planning, I think I can make the natural proofing way work, but we shall see.  It will be a learning experience, but one I am looking forward to.  We'll see how the pizza turns out on Friday night.  

So that's our parade of pets.  There's never a dull moment at the Mentzer menagerie!