"Look mummy...look what I got!" rang the angelic 3-year old voice from our darling Sienna.
"Hm," I thought, "do I
really want to know?" said the voice inside my head before turning around to see...
Happy happy joy! Sienna befriended a dead baby rat!
She agreed with a little persuasion that the dead baby rat should be left outside. Thankfully this settled her because in her reasoning this meant that "now the mummy and daddy rat can come to get the baby and then give it some water to make it feel better".
We waited. But the dead baby rat stayed on the limestone retaining wall in our backyard.
I thought of picking it up and throwing its carcass into the garbage bin, but realised an opportunity presented: teach the kids about death - short of burning the baby rat's dead body into ashes.
Kaden came along then and was happy to help...
So we had a burial, and Sienna learned that the baby rat's body would decompose and be absorbed into the earth to help the trees and flowers grow. Kaden made a gravestone for the burial site :)
Then we did it again when we found the dead daddy or mummy size rat.
If we had a rat problem, it's recently decreased.
** the end **
