Nate is at least six good months into his “Whaboutif Phase.” Meaning that every day, most conversations involve him venturing further and further into imaginative what-if scenarios and preposterous proposals. He asks things like:
“Whaboutif you had three eyeballs?”
“Whaboutif it flew into the sky and then hit the moon and then crashed into the planets and exploded?”
“Whaboutif there is hot lava in the whole entire earth?
“Whaboutif a little fish comes through the pipe into the swimming pool? Whaboutif a BIG fish does?
“Whaboutif I shot my hamburger up into the sky for the buzzards to swoop down and eat? Or a mermaid?”
And then sometimes he’ll quickly and authoritatively pipe-up, “That could happen!”
And Jake will confirm with a confident and all-knowing nod, “Everything is possible.”
Over the last few weeks, the boys and I have been creating a fortress around our fenced garden where I’ve been trying to start a compost pile. We are in desperate need of a soil replenishment strategy as much of our property is covered in moon rock.
Unfortunately, every few mornings I’ll go out and I can tell that some kind of animal has magically alluded our barriers and eaten the buried “Mother Nature”… also known as kitchen scraps. Jake and Nate did a superb job of piling rocks up along the fenced perimeter and helping me to block any possible culprit from squeezing in through any nook and cranny. It was a real-life Minecraft building project.
Then yesterday morning I caught it on video. A little gray fox that is able to leap a six foot metal fence like a cat-like ninja. She is cute and flexible and loves her breakfast compost. Meanwhile, this weekend I was dive-bombed on our back deck by a drunken yellow jacket who stung me and caused my eye to swell shut. In an act of revenge, my new yellow jacket traps have attracted several hundred insects.
So I was thinking… “Whaboutif I add two hundred yellow jackets to tomorrow’s compost and bury it and then the little fox comes for her morning breakfast and then eats them and it causes her to leap onto the roof of the barn?”
That could happen.