Little Dirty Birdy Feet...

Well a big thank-you and kiss on the cheek to Hubs for reminding me of this one...

During the summer, especially on house cleaning days, when the boys are outside, I lock the front door to keep them from running in and out of it and tracking the house up, and also because there is no way of knowing what they'll bring inside with them that they just HAVE to show me. Once Caleb caught a lizard, which bit him on the side of his hand and hung on. Instead of prying it off, he ran all the way into the kitchen to show me that it was hanging there like an ornament. I don't mind lizards, but that certainly does not mean I want one in my bed, so if you please, can you take it outside before it drops off in the house? His answer was "oh no, he's real mad, he just bites harder when you touch him". Well as long as you're sure.
Sometimes they tell people that I lock them out of the house- they leave out the part where the other three doors are open, just not the front door. You should see people's faces when they tell that..."she locks you out?" oh yeah, she wants to keep the house clean. Haha!

Anyway, during one of these locked-door-because-moms-mopping days, the windows were open, and Caleb and Joshy had killed a bird with their bb guns and "field dressed" it. Now, if you're squeamish, or some kind of PETA person or something, you should stop reading now. Look; our kids think that animals (wild ones, anyway) are here to be shot, dressed and thrown on the grill and I'm inclined to go along with that because it drastically reduces our grocery bill. They once shot a chickadee while they were at grandpa and grandmas, and since you don't shoot animals unless you intend to eat them, grandpa plucked that little thing, stuck it on a stick and roasted it and they ate it. That's right, they ate a chickadee. But they learned their lesson. Or so we thought.
Those two killed this bird, cleaned it, and brought it to me wanting me to start them a fire so they could eat it. I told them no. I told them to get rid of it and to not do that any more. Well, after being upset about wasting it, (I told them that next time they should coordinate schedules for roasting with the fire-maker to prevent waste) they threw it in the ditch for the critters to eat. Let me rephrase that. They threw most of it out. Because the next thing I knew, they were at the window again with the dismembered legs, pulling on the tendons making the feet flex and bend and stuff..."look! If you pull on these threads the feet go like this: *scratch*scratch*scratch*" while they were pinching and scratching each other with them. All I could say was "you better get that mess off my porch!"

Fast forward to the next morning. Laundry day. I'm unloading the washer getting ready to hang a basket out on the line, and after I'd emptied it, I looked in and there appeared to be a small stick laying in the bottom. I picked it up...it was a bird foot. One of them had put it in his pocket "for later". I laid it on the corner of the washer and called Joshy in (he was closest) and said "I think this belongs to you..." and his face lit up like Christmas morning, "you found it! I thought I lost it!" and off he went...I told him to just not keep it in his bedroom.