Alas poor terrarium, we hardly knew ye.

After our family moved to Texas I of course assumed the children would find a bevy of new interests, hobbies, etc to go along with the new environment. I was hoping for fun things, innocent things, harmless things, cute things. Here they would be able to ride bikes year round, swim in November, hike around in the woods on our property. All of those options sounded great to me. For the most part I have not been hesitant to embrace the boys' new interests, with one giant exception. Wesley, my sweet five year old, loves bugs. Seriously, he just freaking loves every single one.

We moved here at the very beginning of August with Wesley's birthday occuring 4 weeks later on September 5th. He was having a blast from the word go assisting me with getting our drowned insects out of the pool every afternoon. In true bug collector fashion we took an empty egg carton for him to keep his most prized specimens. It reminded Matt and I very much of the bug collections we had to make the summer before starting 7th grade.

Oh by the way, I maintain Matt blatantly cheated on this assignment. Rather than chase down God's most fragile and disgusting creatures in the woods or basements or garages like the rest of us, he had friends and family retrieve ornamental, outlandish, A+++ (psshh, overachiever) bugs. No fair! If there is to be any justice with regards to the valedictorian in training's bug collection is in the fact that his teacher lost it (after grading it of course. He probably would have burned the school to the ground otherwise for daring to deny his achievement in making other adults do his summer school work). Anyway...

After running around our two acres of grasshopper and caterpillar infested property in 120 degree heat rounding up what most of us step on with his bare hands (or run from, in my case) and depositing them into an old aquarium we decided he needed the proper tools of the trade. Mind you, while he was dodging fire ant hills and sweating his little brains out, the rest of us were watching from our inner tubes in the pool with mixed expressions of shock, horror, confusion, and general icky-ness. Each afternoon Wesley would put on his swimming suit and say today he was going to cool off with us. And each day he would jump in once only to get out and begin wranglin'.

For his birthday Matt went out and purchased a huge bug net, a small wire mesh bug tube with a strap to sling over your shoulder during the hunt, and the best gift of all...a plastic insect/reptile terrarium. It was 4 inches by 6 inches of pure plexiglass perfection. It was the alpha and omega for Wesley. He spent every available moment of each day filling, emptying, and refilling that beloved terrarium with anything and everything he could scoop up with his gigantic net. In true hunter gatherer fashion he would head out and collect until his portable container threatened to burt at the seams, transfer the contents into his holding tank, and head out into the wilderness all over again. Before long we began to notice a huge presence of praying mantises and those too stayed with us for a day and maybe a night before rejoining their brethren with tales of being kidnapped, placed in a box, and stared at by a giant.

The mantises gave us the opportunity to see the food chain in action within the insect realm, as those fascinating creature can devour grasshoppers in the blink of an eye. I wondered how Wesley would take to catching bugs for the purpose of feeding bigger bugs, but he loved feeding the mantises. In truth even I really enjoyed watching those grasshoppers bite it big time. Take that! All those nasty things do is give me bad dreams about swarms devouring me whole, or even worse standing between me and the door back into the house (safely away from THEM). If only there were more mantises I thought. Wait, no. I only thought that until early one morning when Wesley came upstairs to wake me by saying "I brought my mantis inside". I was uneasy considering we had a concrete rule about the terrarium never coming indoors. I asked where and he said in the toy room. After going downstairs I expected to walk into the toy room and see the terrarium perched on the couch next to his cup of milk and brown sugar pop tart.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the door only to be face to face with a mantis, sans enclosure, chilling out on the arm of the sofa. Yes he was next to the milk and pop tart, but I was soooo past seeing anything cute about the situation at this point. Naturally I screamed and rapidly closed the door with Wesley and his new best friend on the other side. I told my young, innocent son through the door to put that bloodthirsty killer back in its pen and immediately take it back outside. Crisis solved.

A while later Matt's sister Kelly came to visit us for a long weekend all the way from New York. To the surprise of no one he proudly showed Auntie Kelly his tools of the trade. She ohhhed and ahhed with proper enthusiasm and awe of her little nephew's source of absolute joy. Little did she know she would find herself drawn into the lie and cover-up of a lifetime over that sweet little boys most prized possession.

One afternoon during her stay we went to run out for paint to start a beautiful mural for the big boys' room. I was backing up my pimped out mom-mobile and couldn't quite swing the beast around in one swift motion. No, I had to pull forward a bit, then reverse again, and finally drive out. It was during the first pull forward for 3 feet that disaster struck. Kelly and I both heard the crack, or shatter, whatever your pleasure. We stopped the car and she hopped out to survey the damage. With her lips in a frown and her eyes in full sad puppy dog mode she announced the sum of all fears: It was the terrarium.

Dear lord baby Jesus, NO! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I was going to lose my mommy badge for running over the only thing he truly loved.

Panic mode ensued. Considering it was the very end of September our chances of finding an identical replacement was slim at best. Catching bugs is generally not an activity retail stores prepare for going into late fall or early winter. Target was out, in fact the young man we asked seemed utterly befuddled by our query. There was only one other place that could possibly spare us the heart wrenching fate of watching those baby blues burst with and endless stream of hot, agonized tears.

Help me Wal-Mart, you're my only hope.

We, or maybe just I, resisted the urge to behold the unyielding awesomeness that is people you can see at wal-mart and kept our eyes on the prize. Behold, there it was! Like the shrubbery in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we accomplished our mission after laying our eyes on the best piece of plastic $.08 can make (and sell for $5.99). Like giddy school girls we returned to the house and inserted the new terrarium seamlessly into the life of the old one, and disposed of the ghastly remains.

And they all lived happily ever after.