Noses

I will preface this post by saying it has been a very, very wet summer. Well summer would be pushing it. It has been very wet in the last couple of months. Full stop.

This morning we found a slug in our kitchen. Well, T found a slug in our kitchen when I sent him to put on his shoes. It was just a baby one, heading for the teeny gap between the door and frame it must have squeezed through last night in order to leave a silvery trail across my kitchen floor and knocking me a little bit sick.

'I'm not standing on it Mummy!'

Words only spoken by a boy who really wants to, not out of some cruelty to other living things, but probably with his unshod foot, just to see what it feels like.

I pause my diatribe about being nice to innocent creatures to grab the baby, my second child now approaching the animal with a gleam in her eye and a bead of drool sliding down her chin. A slug is bad enough, half a slug infinitely worse.

I grab a sheet of kitchen roll, my plan is to gingerly pick up the slug and deposit it on the correct side of the back door to slime, and whatever else slugs do, to it's hearts content, accompanied by a strict lecture on not sneaking into houses uninvited.

Roll in hand I approach from behind.

'Mummy ... stop!'

He eyes my familiar stance with some reproach.

'Don't blow it's nose. It hasn't got a nose!'

Liberator of invertebrates, wiper of bottoms, blower of noses. Same old, same old.