Bee Pinching

Nate has conquered his fear of the plastic ghost.  He yells unintelligible profanities at it, shakes his little fist, and then hits it with the palm of his hand to show it who’s boss.  Unfortunately, the fear phase continues…

On our road trip last week (which was bliss… more on this later), we encountered a strange northwestern obsession with scarecrows.  Is it just autumn?  Is it a redwood forest, small town thing?  I’m not quite sure.  I do know there was a scarecrow in front of just about every shop, restaurant and house… in Ashland, in Jacksonville, in Fort Bragg.  Nate was particularly petrified of a woman in a white polyester dress guarding the kid’s playhouse at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens.  More of a haunted house if you asked him…

The worst though was at breakfast in Mendocino.  We were eating in the beautiful dining room of the MacCallum house and Nate had a nice view of the front door and a large coat rack, piled high with big jackets and an array of hats.  He was convinced it was some kind of 6-headed man.  Poor kid couldn’t keep his eyes off it and kept pointing and calling for help.  We finally moved him to my side of the table so he couldn’t see it and then he was able to polish-off a dinner plate-sized “bunny” pancake.

Last night, back in his own bed, the neighbor’s flood light woke him up in the middle of the night and he was inconsolable.  An alien spacecraft perhaps?  He was so completely freaked out by invisible dangers outside the bedroom window that I had to rock him to sleep tonight, which never happens.

The crazy thing?  We’ve caught him twice over the past few weeks with a live bee between his thumb and forefinger.  The first time, at our house, I thought surely it was a fluke.  But then he did it again during one of our standard weekend picnics at Happy Hollow.

The thought of pinching a live bee…

James?  I need you to rock me to sleep.