The Fate of a Dung Beetle

Tonight, our son was playing around with our two year old and told her he was going to fill her room with "dung".  I asked him what he knew about dung and he said "it's the waste dropping of animals".  He then went on to report that "dung beetles eat dung and turn it in to useful material for soil". 

 

He concluded with "the world would be a lot smellier place without dung beetles".

 

He knows things he shouldn't know (who is teaching him this stuff?)

 

As it turns out, he is mostly correct.  According to Thaibugs.com :

 

• "...a small 1.5 Kg pile of Elephant dung on the African savannah attracted 16 000 dung beetles of various shapes and sizes, who between them had eaten and or buried that dung completely in just two hours. One dung beetle can bury 250 times its own weight in a night."
  

And another thing...

The hit of the day.
Originally uploaded by rkeithstewart

...this finished off the day. Fresh pineapple - the kids loved it and begged for more. We all had to practice a little self-control so that some would be left for tomorrow.

It Seems a Little Late...

...to start this, but what better time?

Today was good - a slow start, a slow middle and a slow end. Everyone was pretty much on their best behavior today (baby daughter had a couple of moments, but nothing big).

I made pancakes for breakfast and we had dip with Wheat Thins for lunch. Yes dip - Asparagus Dip - it had a vegetable, a protein (cheese) and carbohydrates (Wheat Thins). The kids played well outside and rode their bikes. I took some pictures while they rode. The girls were wearing their bathing suits underneath their pants - they looked ridiculous and the pictures will be highly treasured as they get older.

I went down the street and gathered some Kudzu for our Christmas wreath. This all started last year when I "built" our Christmas tree out of sticks gathered from the yard on Christmas Eve. Anyone who knows me knows how much I dislike Christmas trimmings. This dislike usually gets interpreted as a dislike for Christmas - I don't really dislike Christmas, just the fake commercial nature of Christmas. I especially dislike Santa Claus (and we have not perpetuated this myth on our children).

When you really boil it all down, Christmas is a commercial holiday / season. Even Christians for the most part buy into the sentimentality of Christmas without much thought about the miracle of the virgin birth.

Anyway, last year I "built" our tree - this was it:



I think it turned out pretty good (in a really cheap, thrown together way). Well, I was so pleased with the result that I have decided to "build" another tree this year and make it really impressive. I am also making our wreathes out of wisteria vines and Kudzu vines. I twisted the kudzu vines around a bucket to make a wreath and it is drying in the shed. I think my wife (BJS) thinks I'm a little off. I'll give updates.