Thursday, March 3, 2011

A long walk and talk...

We walked to Salvation Army today, and next time we will be taking garbage bags. I think it must be a whole winter's worth of trash having been exposed by the vanished snow, because I do NOT remember the yards and bike trail being so... dump-looking. Bags and hand sanitizer going in my purse next week.
Kittyboy ate a tootsie roll, put the wrapper in his pocket like a good boy, then half a block later as he put acorns in that pocket, he discarded the wrapper in the grass! I about stopped breathing! He'd certainly NEVER seen myself, Husband, or any friends ever throw any trash on the ground! But then again, our surroundings DID suggest that was perfectly fine...
"The earth is the Lord's, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein." Ps. 24:1
So we picked up the tootsie roll wrapper, discussed that verse, how disrespectful it would be of someone to come throw garbage all around our house, and that if the earth is the Lord's, then we shouldn't throw garbage around it either. And it just looks bad. I told him we'd bring bags the next time we walked.
At some point I used the term biodegradeable, and explained that it means "will turn to dirt". Somehow, from there, we got to dead animals - I think from me saying that dead organic matter was biodegradeable and explaining then what that was, plants, bugs, animals, whatever. So I think he asked about things turning into dirt, so I told him bugs and bacteria break things down, and there are animals and birds that also eat carrion. My little Munster was fascinated. (My brain kept asking, independent of my mouth, how we had gotten from cleaning up trash to discussing decomp and vultures?)
Then he picked up a brown leaf, we talked about chlorophyll, and how it keeps the leaves green and stops in fall. And that leaves also turn into dirt eventually. And dirt is what plants grow in, and animals eat the grass, and the carbon cycle. We'd read about the carbon cycle in his aunt's college ecology textbook.
I think that can be school for the day. Sound about right?

posted from Bloggeroid

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