Can't Touch This!

I so love it with children that life throws you many teaching moments. This morning was priceless. Nothing much going on, other than a morning after Mummy came back last night from a week of travel, and was just packing to head off on another plane this morning. The excitement of that whirlwind was not even nearing a peak because today is Halloween and all things related to the "Tinkerbell" costume consumed my five year old's brain.

Cue the teaching moment. A lovely little garden snail was hanging onto a flowering vine that trails onto our upstairs veranda. "Oooh, yuk! A giant African snail!" I picked up the stray and showed "Miss Bliss" that this was neither giant nor African. We looked at its eyes and I showed her how they recoil if touched, and encouraged her to try to touch them. "Ooh, no! All that slimy." I told her not be afraid. But she would have none of it. But at least I had shown that these things are just one of the many neighbours we have to live with. I then put him into a patch of lush weeds for a buffet breakfast.

Within minutes, I found a tiny whistling frog sitting on my bed. I scooped him up and took him to meet my now-dressed-for-school child. "What's that in your hand, Daddy?" I told her that this little mite had a mighty voice, as we heard his singing loudly every night. She peered into my cupped hand and looked at the frog's eyes. No fear. So, perhaps our brief moment with the snail had worked speedily.

We humans tend to think of the world as our playground and want to control natural things. At its worst, we try to wrest control from nature by force--weapons, new construction, destruction of things that we dislike. Co-existence is not something we are very good at. We have dealt with the dilemma of fight or flight by being well armed. I am trying to pass on what I believe: we all have our space and we all have a role to play. I don't step on ants or swat flies or put salt on slugs. I used to have a garden where I left it to natural predators or particular plants to deal with what I called "pests". Nature has its means of control and we don't need to mess with that.