"Sleeping" Crickets

We have been spending LOTS of time outside. The weather up here has been beautiful...and for August, un-seasonable cool. So, in addition to riding his bike, scooter, and truck, Kade has taken a new interest in catching various animals - frogs from our backyard, lightning bugs, and crickets mostly.

And the catching of the frogs is fine. We use a net to catch them out of the storm drain...then put them in a bucket...until they decide to hop out. Then Kade screams at me that the frog has hoped out...and I scream at him to catch it (because there is no way that I am touching that thing)...then he re-catches it and the process begins again.

And for the lightning bugs...Kade is awesome at catching them in an open fist and dropping them (more like slamming...but whatever) into a glass jar so that we can watch them light up. I mean...he is really awesome at it.

However, the poor crickets are another story. Kade can find tons of them...and has informed me that "the Daddy ones hop really fast...so I catch the baby ones." And catch them he does. Then, he plays with them...puts them on his bicycle to "ride" it...puts them on his shoulder because, "he's my friend, Momma...and he likes me!!!"

So the other night we were outside...Kade catching and befriending crickets, and I noticed that the cricket wasnt jumping away while Kade was doing all these activities with him. So I asked Kade, "Why isnt the cricket jumping away Buddy?" To which Kade responded without hesitation, "Mommy, dis cricket is super tired...he's sleeping...shhhhhhh." To which I said, "Well Buddy, I dont think he's sleeping...I think he's dead."

And you would have thought that I had said the sky was green!!! Kade looked at me like I had 3 heads and quickly discounted the very thought that the cricket could be dead. "No he isnt, Momma...look. He just likes me," as Kade is holding the dead cricket in his palm showing me how he is NOT dead.

And since then, we have found a few more "sleeping" crickets...each one thinking that they have found a playmate in Kade...only to succumb to their demise by the too tight grip of a three year old.