Our New Friend

When I was about 7 years old, some friends of mine came to stay with us for the weekend when their parents went out of town. (I realize now what a luxury that is!) We were out in the backyard when we spotted two peacocks that had escaped from the zoo nearby. My friend, Bo, ran inside to tell my mom. He said, "Miss Pattie! Miss Pattie! There are peacocks in the backyard and I'm not lyin'!" We still laugh about that today.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon. After lunch, I forced the girls to go outside and play. I don't know what is going on with them but lately they haven't been interested in playing outside. They do their best to come inside every 30 seconds for various reasons, the most popular being a trip to the bathroom. They were outside for all of a minute when they came running inside and K exclaimed, "Mama! There's a turtle on the back porch! A real live turtle!"

I told them not to touch it and went out to inspect it. Sure enough, a small box turtle had found his way to our porch in search of food. He was covered with dryer lint (from the load that was, at the time, being dried) so I cleaned him off and put him back in the grass. The girls wanted to touch his shell and I told them they could as long as I was out there with them. K decided that we needed to name him "Boo" because that was a good boy name. Not sure where that came from!

We watched Boo for the next hour or so as he made his way back to the porch, across the length of it, then back out into the yard. The last I saw of him, he was digging under some leaves, trying to find a worm. Every now and then, K would say, "Where's Boo?" and then try to find him. L said that he left our yard to go explore the neighborhood.