The Adventures of Velvin

I should be at work today, but I feel lousy.  Looks like I got a touch of Ruby’s ick that kept us both home on Sunday. 

Ruby and I played legos for a few minutes this morning.  She has a cast of characters – policeman, babysitter, surfer and a mom.  They all live in the same very small environ.  Surfer dude is a would-be hairdresser.  Babysitter drinks a lot of coffee.  Policeman is always out, fighting the bad guys.  And the mom?  Well, she wears a tall, very Bettlejuice-esque  black and white hat.

The extra legos live outside in my old college footlocker, a gift from my aunt. We’d planned to get rid of the blocks pre-vow renewal, but Ruby suddenly took a shine to building things.  She creates things Zac never did – hammers, one-man prisons, torture devices and homes.  Zac built cars and boats and spaceships and rockets.  I made…stairs.  But you don’t need to know that.

As we dug through the detritus in the bottom of the container, a little bug scuttled out, then burrowed back under.

“Ruby, there’s a beetle bug under the footlocker.  Wanna see it?”

Ruby didn’t even look up.

“Oh, that’s Velvin,” she said.  “He’s a cricket.”

I’m no entomologist, but Velvin looked very much like a cockroach.  Wait, do we have even have roaches in Washington?  Isn’t it too cold and wet.  Please, God!  I hate crunchy bugs.

We pushed the mauve footlocker aside (don’t judge!) and Velvin scurried out. Then he hopped. Roaches don’t hop…do they?!

I called Rex over.  Any way you slice it, I wanted Velvin dead.  Bad mommy!

Velvin hopped himself to the other side of the carport.  Brave Sir Rex, frightened by the sound of the footlocker scraping on the concrete, ran away.  So much for valor.

Ruby’s face lit up.  She remembered something.

“Velvin had a whole bunch of babies under there,” she told me, big smile on her face.  Ruby loves baby anything, even 6-legged insects.

Then Velvin, poor soul, isn’t male after all.  She’s a mommy. 

 

I still want her dead.