Crawdads and Excuses

"You get a line,

I'll get a pole honey!

You get line,

I'll get a pole babe!

You get a line, I'll get a pole

And we'll go fishing in the crawdad hole

Honey, baby mine!"

This morning, ignoring the fact that it is raining, Anna, Leah, and Benjamin crept out of the house, careful not to be followed by everyone and their brother, and went crawdad fishing. Basically, the old gentleman at the feed store, a Mr. Udell Butler told Mama that those tall stacks of mud along the side of ditches are crawdad towers. They dig down in the earth and stop once they find water. I had always assumed that you would catch a crawdad in a creek. But Mr. Butler told us that you take a string, tie a piece of raw meat onto the end, and drop it down the hole. When you feel a tug, you yank the string back up, and in theory, you should have a crawdad. Unfortunately, those wee beasties simply eat the meat and drop off halfway like some natural claw-machine. (those ones that you pay out the nose to use at the grocery store and then it drops the ugly teddy bear right when it gets close to the hole! ;) Nontheless, after unlucky fishing yesterday, the kids went out again this morning and still didn't catch a thing. But Daniel is as excited as any Tom Sawyer to go out and try his luck. He says he is determined to catch one. And when Daniel is determined to do something, it generally works. Too bad he can't debate the crawdad out of his hole, or something equally logic-minded, for then he'd be sure to win! :)

The other day when Matthew was on a walk with me, and we had the two little girls, I was picking a glorious bouquet of swamp honeysuckle and ferns. I LOVE flowers! I fill my hands with them at any chance I get! I cannot thrive very well away from them. And I don't like the hothouse ones. I like the wild ones. Anyway, these ones smelled particularly good. Shame on me. A bit later, Matthew quite politely informed me that I had pollen all over my nose. Blast! I spend half my life with pollen on my nose, because where there are flowers, I must be, and where there are scented flowers, there's my nose, and where there is my nose, there ends up being pollen. Ho-hum. So I wrote this poem as an excuse.

"My Excuse"

By me!

"I have pollen on my nose

From the smelling of a rose

And the sniffing of the honeysuckle bloom.

And a yellow sort of dust

That is transferred on there just

`Cause I stopped to smell the rich perfume.

I was happy as a bee

Buzzing round the apple tree,

And I paused to take a sniff from every bud,

And I really couldn't care

That the branches pulled my hair--

That my toes were sinking quickly in the mud.

Yes, I'm brushed with powdered gold

In a fashion quaintly bold

From the smelling of the flowers in the lane.

And I know I am the type

That forgets her nose to wipe

So my dear, you must remind me o'er again!"

What do you think? -Rachel