My younger daughter is a squirrel. She has gotten into the avocation of wandering around the house and grabbing little things, putting them into bags or purses or pouches or sacks or boxes, and then putting those little treasure packages in strategic locations. It's an odd habit for a three year old; I suppose it would be odder if she were thirty.
Now there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the objects that she squirrels, at least none that my husband and I can determine: dolls, combs, barrettes, bottle tops, forks, paper, stickers, tampons, rocks, dried up pieces of food . . . This was amusing for a while but has now become somewhat problematic.
The three items of some import that we (her family) just couldn't seem to find, and that she claims to have no knowledge of squirreling are as follows: a shaker of pepper, a bottle of honey (shaped like a teddy bear), and my small jewelry box holding my diamond necklace.
Now here's where the plot thickens. I hired a new cleaning service this week. They were machines. They really cleaned our house, even removed the dusty bunnies from atop our fridge. A day or so after they did this thorough cleaning, the honey and the jewelry box came up missing.
One could easily and rationally assume that these maids made off with my diamond necklace, were it not for the nagging little fact that we have a habitual thief and hoarder living in our midst, as well as the fact that it taxes me to intuit what in the world they would want with a bottle of honey.
So I haven't called the maid service to ask them if they have seen my jewelry box with the diamond necklace inside it or to blatantly accuse them of it, because I feel certain that said object of value is in our house somewhere - hidden away in a place that my daughter herself has either forgotten or intends to sequester for the duration.
I have hope that I will eventually find it, however, because as I was madly searching for the jewelry box yesterday, I came upon a new hoard: stuffed to bursting inside a plastic Dora the Explorer backpack, jammed under my bed, was a host of lost paraphernalia which included . . .
a shaker of pepper.
1 comment:
All I can say is fascinating!
Last night, at my mother's house, we were talking about the amount of thieved merchandise at her workplace. The Natural Science Center hosts gobs of school children. Her store is filled with little knick-knacks and gew-gaws-- a hot bed for sticky fingers. Turns out they lose hundreds of little rings and rocks weekly. My mother even caught one kid who had unwrapped a little something, pocketed it and discarded the wrapper. When caught, he claimed they were his. (He was caught when he reached into said pocket for money to pay for something else and the unwrapped morsel fell out!)
Now, this is certainly not the same thing! Your little squirrel is something all together different...
I say again, fascinating!
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