Take time to smell the flowers....

Take time to smell the flowers....or the dead armadillo on the side of the road!

Yes, it's probably a bit out of the ordinary, but we like to march to the beat of our own drum sometimes! While out on the golf cart in the neighborhood today, we found this dead armadillo on the side of the road. Sometimes opportunity knocks in the strangest places! Reese & I parked the cart and checked it out. Had to be careful of the ants, but once I flipped him over so Reese could see his face & back the ants went away.

Some people might think it's a bit odd to encourage Reese to check out a dead animal (which was obviously hit by a car...I would not stop for a plumped-up dead animal who might have died from disease!). But it was really interesting to hear Reese check it out. He was not grossed-out or scared. It wasn't some morbid thing to him.

Reese had great questions: Where are his eyes? (Mommy's answer: the ants & beetles probably ate them. Gory, but true!) Why did the ants eat him? (Mommy:Because that's part of their job in the world. If they didn't do that, there would be dead animals all over. Some beetles & ants eat the dead animals so they don't just sit there) Is that his tail? (Mommy: No, that's his leg bones. The bugs already ate all his meat off.)

We used a rock to knock on his back to see how hard his armor was. We talked about how it is good protection against coyotes that might want to eat it, but it's not good protection against a car. We checked out his claws & digging feet & decided to come home and find out what they eat. We found out that most armadillos eat ants & beetles...life sure goes full circle huh? They also eat a variety of other things.

So although stopping to check out a dead armadillo on the side of the road probably isn't in any preschool curriculum I know of, we had a great unschooled lesson :)

And a cool quote I got today in my email!

"Creativity comes from accepting that you're not safe, from being absolutely aware, and from letting go of control. It's a matter of seeing everything - even when you want to shut your eyes." - Madeleine L'Engle, Author