The closest to Normal (Illinois) that I've ever been.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Unlucky Penny


Yesterday we went to feed Penny the turtle, and found that she had died. We were rather shocked because Penny had previously shown no signs of illness at all. Judging from the very unappealing state of her body, she must have died the previous day--it was a closed casket funeral. We buried her under the tree in the front yard (under three layers of mulch and a layer of shade cloth--it was quite an undertaking (ha!)
The kids made a memorial. The kids were bummed out, but not much more demonstrative than that. Sam really enjoyed taking Penny to school the other day--it made him exceedingly popular. (Hopefully Penny's death was unrelated to her outing). Ironically, Saturday was Lucky Penny Day.

Today Joseph has been playing with a wooden snake, carefully tending to it and feeding it smaller snakes. I asked him about his snake, and he told me:
When it was a baby, it got chased into the garden by a wolf. The lake was mutated and it got mutated into a grown-up. Now its poison doesn't hurt you, but its poison has AIDS in it. The AIDS attack your white blood cells. But because it was a baby, it has to bite you many times to kill you. It can only give you one AID at a time. But if you feed it it won't bite you. Do you want to feed my snake?

3 comments:

Beth said...

I'm so sorry about Penny, but the memorial is lovely. I am sure she would have approved.

Susan said...

Thanks for your condolences. Judging from past behavior, Penny probably would have tried to attack the memorial. She was special that way.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry to hear about Penny too.

And, also, please do NOT feed that snake. It sounds like a snake better off left alone.