It is a fair comment to say that in our house/work it is not safe to be a mouse or a fish (or a cookie but that is a whole other story). Heres the story.
A little background info. My parents own these 4 homes on some field kinda land. You know, if no one cared for it, it would end up with tall weeds and flowers and shit on it. There is a little stream behind it, and it is full of critters. Birds and squirrels and marmets and what not. They rent 3 of these houses out and one they turned into our office and then built a big shop next to it. This means that each of our offices is in a bedroom and we have a fully functional kitchen, one of the living rooms is our front entry office and the other one is a playroom for Brandon. This also means, WE ARE SURROUNDED BY CRITTERS! (Side note we are also surrounded by black widows that my mother refuses to let us kill, she just relocates them).
Last week the girl in our office Yo (short for Yolonda but we call her Yo) went to the bathroom and thought she saw something. She kinda forgot about it until my mom went into the bathroom and started screaming. "YOU GUYS YOU GUYS THERE IS A MOUSE IN HERE." Yo was like I knew it I swear I thought I was going crazy seeing things. So, of course, being my mom she does the most logical thing ever. "Brandon come in here with me lets catch the mouse"! Yes you read that right. So of course, my child the über boy goes running right in. They proceed to pull all the boxes and shit out till they find the mouse. I don't really know what happens but about 10 minutes later my child comes walking into my office with a mouse IN A BAG DEAD! I'm like uhhh what the fuck. Brandon says, "he dead mom, da mouse died, he died." So I ask my mom who informs me they scared the mouse to death.
Uhhh okay fine, but why is the DEAD mouse in a baggie? Well duh! My mom tells me that they are going to take the mouse up to my grandmas where my cat now lives, so that they can feed the mouse to my cat. Ummmm. Uhhhh. Sigh!
About an hour later I see something run bye me and I realize there is a second mouse. Well shit. I go to move some of Brandon's stuff and realize that the mice are living in his little recliner he eats in. Grrr. So out goes the recliner. I clean everything and change everything, sheets and what not. And we leave for the day. My mom sends my little cousin who works for us to go buy some mouse traps. The next morning Brandon and I arrive at work and do you know what we see????
FOUR FUCKING DEAD MICE LINED UP OUT FRONT! Brandons like "mom more mice, they dead, they not moving mom, they dead mice, look mom more mice." My mom informs me she put them outside for the neighborhood cats to eat. SERIOUSLY, SHE SERIOUSLY SAID THAT.
That night Brandon stayed at my parents. When they brought him home he had a ton of things to tell me. Such as, "mom the mouse, it's in the cats belly, he ate em mom, he's in his belly." Or, "The bird ate the worm he ate the worm." So for an entire week I heard all about how the mouse was in the cats belly. They really took that fucking mouse up to my fucking cat and fed it to him. You can see how well this must be sitting with me, the VEGETARIAN!
That brings us to last night. We only had one of our FIVE fish left. Fred, the one with the bug eyes and 5 inch poops. Until last night. He died. Brandon walks by, looks in the tank, sees Fred floating on the bottom and says, "he died mom, like the mouse, he died, he's not moving." Then he says, "mom, he no swim more, he no swim, he died." It was sad. But what was sadder was that later the fish floated up to the tank and he got really excited thinking the fish was swimming again and we had to tell him that no, the fish was still dead, and he watched rob flush him down the toilet.
So now I ask you all mighty mommy bloggers, how did you teach your kids about death? Did you just say the fish died and leave it at that, did you tell them what death meant, did you explain heaven? And on top of that, at what age did you choose to have the talk? Since he is only 2.5 do I just leave it that the fish died and move on, or do I elaborate now? Do I wait till he is closer to 4 to explain death? Do I replace the fish or just take the fish tank out for a while? NEED ADVICE ON THIS ONE...ASSVICE WELCOME!
(my mom would like me to add that feeding the mice to the cats was her way of recycling and being green.)
4.18.2008
He died mom
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5 comments:
We had a couple of fish disappear last year. We think the turtles ate them, or maybe they slid out through the hose when my hubs was changing the water in the aquarium. We kinda just let the kids think that they were eaten by the turtles. They still talk about it. But they are OK with it.
Branden will probably be fine if you just leave it as it is. Get a couple replacement fish.
My kids are barely learning to understand where grandpa Jim (he passed away 3 1/2 years ago) is and they are 5 and 4, but I think now is the time when they can better comprehend death. And all the gone-ness and finality that goes along with it.
This reminds me of one time when we were younger and I was sleeping over at your house when you still lived over on Toll Rd. One of your cats had caught a baby mouse and brought it inside and was playing with it. Of course, the mouse wasn't dead, it was just playing dead as your cat batted it from room to room. That is until the cat got bored and let it run away and we had to help your mom tear apart the entire house so we could catch the mouse and release it back outside!
I would just leave it at that. It sounds like he has a good handle on it for his age. I don't think I really ever had a talk with the children about death in particular.
I never have had to do that but I know that when I was young and my grandparents or fish or animal died-my mom said that everything has its time to be on this earth and that when we die, we become part of this beautiful earth. But we are jewish and so we do not really believe in heaven. But looking back-i think she handled it really in a good way.
Unfortunately we had the talk because one of my sister's friend's little boy died of Lukemia and I started crying when I found out. Little man went to a church daycare at the time so I know he had heard Heaven before and I told him that is where you go live with Jesus and he was sad because this little boy's mommy & daddy couldn't see him anymore. I think he understands far too much of it.
Now, though we are dealing with "kill". He told me the other day that someone killed the skeleton in the ship (its an exhibit at our zoo........)!
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