Thursday 14 July 2011

This is perfectly normal for OUR family.

We had a sad discovery this afternoon. Three fledging blue tits drowned in our unused pond which had tipped up and collected rainwater. I assume that they fledged out of a nest in the apple tree then went plop into the water.





Of course in a usual (normal?) household this would simply be a sad event. In our family...



ds1 began to dig a hole in our lawn.



He said 'If you put this on your blog I want people to know I'm not burying the birds because I care. It's because I want them to decompose and then in a few months time I can dig them back up and examine their bones. I haven't got a bird skeleton yet.'


I can hardly accuse my children of being odd seeing as it was me taking photos of dead birds on our back lawn...

Another thing that is perfectly normal in our house. Taking an old outgrown t-shirt like this (with too-short, chewed sleeves) :



and converting it (with ample cursing over a sewing machine) into a new, extended sleeve, t-shirt using scraps of blue t-shirt.




Ditto this one which was an adult t-shirt got for free from the local Swap Shop,



now converted to a long-sleeve child's t-shirt:







And as if that isn't enough to classify us as slightly odd compared with the rest of the population, some of us have daughters who spend the whole day like this:


5 comments:

Homeschool family said...

I love this, it is so funny, don't forget to post the unearthing of the skeleton later on in the year.
(jealous as we don't have a skeleton collection YET!)

Anonymous said...

WOW! Go you with the fruitful sewing!

How long does it take for a bird to decompose in a comprehensive manner?

MadameSmokinGun said...

Weird how the idea of decomposing birds and skeleton collections didn't seem at all weird but the very idea of using a sewing machine made me shiver.

Big mamma frog said...

homeschool family - I have an animal skull in a clarks shoe box from when I was a kid. It's now been passed on to my son who keeps it in the wardrobe!

parasombra - no idea how long. But having watched numerous episodes of CSI I'm assuming it's very dependent on humidity and temperature and acidity of the soil. Deserts are great if you want mumification and our lawn looks rather desert-like at the moment (only the strongest tufted grass has survived the dry weather).

MSG - usually sewing machines just make me turn to drink. It's pretty rare for me to swear, but...

funkyhan said...

Just catching up on the last few months of my g reader ;) lovely reading :) makes me hope that one day, I too will have children burying dead animals to make skeletons for their collection ;)