Animal of the day

What beautiful eyes 

A toad. This photo was taken in Nebraska last week. What little boy hands those are. I love children's hands. I have a ton of photos of our son's little hands from when he was a tot with chubby little fingers.

This is the first time he's seen and picked up a toad. He even witnessed one chowing down on a big bug! We took a walk in the evening and he said, "There's the one I saw before!" I asked him how he could know it was the same one. There were dozens of them in the campground. They all looked alike to me. He said he could tell by its beautiful, sparkly eyes. Is this kid a lover of toads or what.

When he was six he saved a snail from drying out on our driveway. He put it at the side of the house where it was damp and the little snail recovered by late afternoon.

The Snail Story (when we lived in a house)

After dinner our son was all red faced and in tears. I asked him what was wrong and he said he'd gone to check on the snail and it was gone.  It had run away. I tried my hardest not to laugh. He's got a heart of gold. I told him he should be happy that Snailly (yes, this snail was named) got well and returned to his habitat to live out his life free and unfettered.  Be happy for him, I explained.

I told him he had changed the course of that one snail's life and for that he should be glad, and that's got to be one happy snail now. He felt a bit better. 

To this day, he still remembers when the snail "ran away."