Ninety-eighth day

Rewilding today.  We observed animal houses on our walk to the field today.  Well, we saw one nest high up in a maple tree.  It was mis-identified as a "bird's nest", a "hawk's nest", a "nest", until one boy came up with the correct answer of "a squirrel's nest".  No one knew what a squirrel's nest was called, let alone cared.  If I ask them on Friday, I'm almost certain no one will remember the word, "drey".  They were concerned that a squirrel is quite a heavy animal, and wouldn't it just fall through the leaves?  I explained how they kind of wove them together so tightly, because leaves are pliable, that they created a lovely warm kind of tunnel in which the squirrel's body, or the little brood of babies, fit quite snugly.

At the field there was a lovely red-tailed hawk hovering and no one knew what it was either.  Most of them knew that hawks ate mice though.

Everyone wanted to run but I hauled their minds in with descriptions of dream houses, and how we don't build sustainable houses, and what could we use to build a house right here.  Each person was instructed to run far away from everyone else and think about their house, which side would face the sun, what material they would build it out of, how big it would be.

One boy ran straight on to the baseball triangle and drew a large room in the sand.  Basically a bedroom, with a bed, a desk with a computer, and a tv in the corner.  He didn't think of a bathroom or a kitchen or anything else!  Priorities of a 12 year old!

Two girls built a hypothetical house together using the awning of a kind of clubhouse at the end of the field.  They used mud to block up the holes in the netting-wire.

My favorite was a hobbit-like house built by a short french boy, under the hill, with a tree growing on top and les racines, the roots, would come down through the roof and form shelving and hold up walls.  The side open from the hill would be all windows, to give a lot of light because the inside would be dark under the hill.  He had a bathroom and kitchen and everything sorted out, even heating.

Then they were to run a race but no one wanted to race the fastest kid, so we all just jogged back to school.

In perusing the Huffington Post at lunchtime, I sometimes get sidetracked by their weird side-stories, and today there was one about a 63-year old set of twins in Tennessee named Andrew and Anthony who lived together  as recluses.  They were found dead, each sitting in an armchair next to one another.

But the weirdest thing was that they had been dead for three years!

They lived in a quiet street in a town, not stuck out in the country far away from any neighbours.  No one realised that they were dead.

They had no family or friends who inquired about their whereabouts?  Apparently the mailman stopped delivering mail because he thought they had moved.  Many people in the neighbourhood believed that it was an empty house.   Someone continued to cut their lawn, although that is also a mystery, apparently.

And how did they die?  Did they commit suicide together?  Did they just both decide to die together and sit down and do it?  Were they overcome by fumes?

Until the toxicology reports we will not know how they died, and we will probably never know why.  

The connection between twins is such a fascinating phenomenon.  Nick sent me an article this evening about a pair of four-year old conjoined twins, craniopagus twins, joined at the head.  These two are particularly intriguing because they share a thalamus, which means that one twin experiences what the other twin eats or sees or feels.  So for example the mother can put her hand over one girl's eyes, show the other girl a toy, and the one with covered eyes can tell what it is!  Apparently they have difficulty knowing where one ends and the other begins, although they do use the pronoun, "I", not "we" when they talk about themselves, but this might mean "we".

When the boys were very little they didn't know who was Matt and who was Nick.  If you asked them, they would point to one another, and then themselves, and look confused.  When they were a little older, they would tell me their dream as they were eating breakfast, and it seemed that they had shared the same dream, although they were probably just enjoying weaving a story, in which they both took part, together.  If one woke from their afternoon nap before the other, he would always know as soon as the other was about to appear at the top of the stairs, it seemed he could "feel" him wake up.  And of course they had that wonderfully expressive and eloquent twin language in which they understood one another completely, although no one around them could make head or tail of what they were saying.

My little sweetie-boys!

Oh, Time.