Goodbye Bird

There you have it.  Problem solved.  No more bird.

Yesterday morning, Ashton tearfully broke the news to me and Jared that the bird had passed away in the night.  All the kids were pretty sad.  We reassured them that they had given that little bird the gift of a very happy last few days of life and that he surely would have died sooner and sadder without their tender loving care.

Ashton and Jared gave the bird a proper burial in his toilet-paper-tube coffin in the backyard.

Then this morning, the kids announced that the snake had escaped. More tears. They went from 2 exciting pets to none in just two days.

Luckily the snake escape was a false alarm.  That little guy was just hiding in the cage while he shed his skin.

So we're back to one nice easy pet.  Well, sort of easy.  Ashton, Eliza and I plus a little neighbor we were taking care of spent way too long last night at the pet store while the employees looked for some feeder fish we could buy for the snake.  They were totally out of the small goldfish and really unsure whether the cheapest tropical fish we were looking at could poison the snake. So we went home empty handed and have to head to the pet store again soon.  Not exactly convenient. Oh well.

On another note, Ashton and Isaac had their first flag football game last night.  Jared found out the day before that he needed to be their coach (no one is quite sure why he was only given one day to gather his team and be ready to play their first game...).  Given that very few of the boys had ever played before, they somehoe managed to muddle through with some impressive moments here and there. Or at least that's what Jared said. I was there but I couldn't tell you a thing about how the game went.

One of my goals for this fall: learn the rules of football so I can watch these guys play with some tiny measure of intelligence.