I think it’s inevitable; every parent wants their kid to be like them. Or at least like the same things they like. That’s why I’m working on giving Milo a love of insects. While we were on a walk in Lancaster we saw this big mama parasitic wasp laying her eggs deep inside the maple tree, presumably into a larvae of some sort, judging from the exit holes in the trunk. It looked like a lot of work. She had three tubes pushed inside there, and was straining with the effort. I later looked it up and she is a huge ichneumonid wasp, probably after a woodwasp larvae which she found using her antennae to sense its vibrations deep in the tree. She drills a whole through solid wood, then lays her egg inside the other larvae (still living), and her baby eats the other from the inside out. Amazing. Gruesome. And Jeremiah is completely uninterested. I don’t get it!

I also like skunks. And porcupines. Slow, defensible creatures that never hurry and no one bothers to eat. A skunk was trying to take up residence under Omi’s house while we were there, and she was combating it by filling its hole with moth balls. We did a lot of talking about “melling dunks,” as Milo says. He can’t pronounce “s” followed by a consonant.  We “melled” it in the basement, “melled” it in the yard, and “melled” other ones while out driving.  One night we even saw it eating bird seed under the neighbor’s feeder.

Chocolate donuts with sprinkles. I USED to like these things, but this time the pleasure wasn’t as pure as I remember. I must be getting fussy in my old age.