Mud Puppy

The Grandson was with us again today.  Some time after lunch, he decided that he wanted to go visit Pop-Pop and Nanny, so his Poppy took him down there.  I stayed home to finish baking a batch of cookies, but when they were done, I piled them on a paper plate and walked them across the road to Nanny's.

Poppy, Pop-Pop, and Caleb were sitting in the open door of Pop-Pop's workshop.  As I approached, I could hear Pop-Pop and Caleb counting - "One, Two, Three...Go, cat, go!" - then a whooshing sound.  As I got closer, I saw that Caleb was in a chair with wheels.  At "Go, cat, go!" Pop-Pop would give the chair a mighty shove and send Caleb sailing across the concrete floor in a fit of giggles. 

The action stopped when they saw the cookies.  Three sets of grubby hands reached for the plate.  Cookies disappeared.

After passing out the treats, I walked out to the garden to see what was happening with the few things we've planted so far.  Caleb went with me.  At the far end of the garden was a big mud puddle.  Caleb made a bee-line for it.  He got right up to the edge and stopped.  I watched him, wondering what he was going to do.

"Can I walk in this?" he asked me?

I thought about it for a minute.  It was a gorgeous, warm day.  He was bare-footed.  That mud would feel spectactular oozing between toes; I was half-tempted to kick off my shoes and walk in it, myself. 

"Yeah, go ahead," I told him.

He eased a foot into the water.  "Wow, this is great!" he said breathlessly as he slowly waded to the middle of the puddle.  He bent over and swished the warm water with his hands.

I laughed and turned my attention toward the potato rows.  We've had a tough time getting a potato crop to grow this year.  Soon after we first planted potatoes, we had several heavy rains.  Some 'taters sprouted, some rotted.  Others were dug up by a mystery critter.  Last week, Nanny found a bag of sprouted potatoes in her pantry, and she and Pop-Pop planted them in the skips in the original potato rows.  Now, I saw a series of holes where they'd done their planting.  "Hey, Pop-Pop," I called toward the shop, "something's digging again."  After a minute, he came ambling out the door. 

In a minute, I heard, simultaneously, "Uh-oh!" and "Oooo, Caleb!" 

I turned around to find this:

"Look, Grandmama, I'm a crocodile!" he told me, as he pulled himself through the ooze.

(Pretty good impression, eh?  Twenty-five years ago, I'd probably have beaten his daddy for this.)  ;)

There wasn't much that could be done about it at this point, so I let him wallow for a while, then called him to the water hose in the back yard.