Hard Facts of Life

It is a hard fact to learn that little baby squirrels sometimes fall out of trees, and even more difficult to discover that your sweet dog thinks dead squirrels are a good thing.

The Little Kids were playing outside before school this morning when they saw a little squirrel fall to its death. They gathered around to look at it and were upset to see it gasp its last breath. Grace, our dog, was not upset at all. She thought this was wonderful and squirmed around little legs to reach her new toy. I wish I could adequately describe the shrieks of horror that were heard as she flipped her new toy around in the air. She didn’t eat it, just played with it.

I came to the rescue and buried the nasty thing in the flower bed. (Free fertilizer is always a good thing in my opinion.) Then I overheard the 6 year old explaining to his little sister, age 3, that the squirrel wasn’t going to Heaven because squirrels have no souls. Hooray! He got it! Immortal souls and what becomes of them was our focus in catechism this week. I worried that it went over the head of my first grader, but it appears that he understood it all. Children are so much smarter than we give them credit for being. So, we buried the squirrel, but said no prayers for it. In the words of my 6 year old, “We pray for people, but not for animals. Animals don’t last.” Well put, my dear.