What My Girls Put Me Through

Last Saturday, Sarah sent me the following message:

"OH, MY GOB!  Baby raccoon!"  And this:



I started to panic.  On the tiny screen of my phone, the background appeared to be the back porch where her grandparents live.  Could a baby raccoon have crawled up there to die and Sarah was petting a rabid animal?  I remembered all the times the girls had liberated tadpoles from the pond, to keep in ice cream buckets under their beds, until I returned them to the pond from whence they came. 

I texted back, "Oh, MY Gob, is that a raccoon?  Has it bitten you?"

To which Sarah replied, "Oh, the minx bit me, but twas only a scratch."

Oh, no.  I was one hundred miles away and Sarah had been bitten by a raccoon.  Then, I get this from Cathy:

"Don't worry about Sarah, I was the one who got bit, but it wasn't the raccoon.  It was the bobcat."

WTF was going on?  I didn't get the full story, just tantalizing, "Oh, Mom, stop worrying.  The skunk left us mostly alone,"

until last night, when Cathy told me they had been at a fair and played with the animals (under supervision) at the wildlife preserve area.  She actually was bitten by the bobcat, whose baby teeth were so tiny and inoffensive, they didn't even break the skin. 

My girls love to tease me.  It was a great weekend for all of us, they had a nice time with their dad, I had a good time with friends at Leah's going away party, but the best part is that they included me in their good times.  And that they didn't die from rabies or death by bobcat.

This last photo is not from their time at the fair, it's one I took a month ago, when we were out walking on the gravel road behind our house.  The girls decided to share a dandelion and each try to blow the fluff off it, into the face of the other.  Such moments were made to last, even just on film:

 All my girls put me through... is worth it.  Every moment.