The birthday week is over. We're back in the Lala, hunting character actors in their natural habitat. Extended family have flown home and all of our cars are back and clean of fingerprint dust. It seems the one-year old mark was more than a major numerical milestone. Archer has grown into a bit of a BOOOOOOOY. Yesterday I caught him smashing ants with his fists. It was like a slow-motion action sequence with the "Noooooooooooooooooo!" and the cheeks doing that funny thing where it looks like they are made of rubber. Archer looked at me like "what?" and whimpering I had to pluck the dead ants off his arm and explain to him that "we don't kill bugs. We wave at them and if they are in the house we gently place them outside."
Archer started waving at the ants (because he's big on the wave right now) before sweetly smashing the rest of them. I nearly fainted. I will go out of my way to save a bee from the pool even if it means getting stung. (Okay, I stopped doing that after about 5 stings, but you get my point.) Spiders are our friends. There is no flushing Daddy Longlegs down the toilet in my house. No siree.
I hated the boys that lived across the street in my old house as a kid because they tortured spiders and salted snails and fried caterpillars with a magnified glass. I still hate them but now I think maybe its a boy thing? Arch is only one year old and he likes to smash ants. It's not like he's fourteen hitting snakes with baseball bats. But I am warning you, Archer. If there is one thing I will not tolerate, it's smashing and killing creatures no matter how microscopic and seemingly insignificant.
And even though you're name more or less means, "hunter", you're not supposed to kill. Nope. You can hunt character actors with me on cement safari because I don't really care about them but the ants? Dude. Not the ants.
GGC
