Ellen and I were walking down the trail from Noah's Ark today when she said, "I was recently reading a book about rabbits. It had a "c" word in it that I didn't know, do you know what that was?" I guessed "coney," but that wasn't it. After a minute, she came up with it: Crepuscular.
(Now, at the end of last week, Ellen finished Kindergarten, so she has some solid learning to draw from, but "crepuscular?" What kind of Kindergarten is this? I mean, when I went to Kindergarten, I learned the difference between triangles and squares, but not much more.)
In any case, not wanting to appear ignorant of Kindergarten vocabulary, I said that I thought it meant that rabbits were the kind of animals that ate their own poop. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The word for that is "coprophagia." While rabbits do engage in coprophagia, they are also crepuscular, which means that they are active at dawn and dusk--at first light and at twilight.
Rural Ways has been having a tremendous problem with the local deer herd eating from our garden and orchard. The deer, from my observations, appear to be crepuscular, too, like rabbits. I just wish the deer ate poop instead of apple blossoms.
Well, I have several comments after reading this. One-Why didn't you tell us earlier that you discovered Noah's ark? And in Utah, no less? Two-remember I told you in your last blog to let Ellen stay with us in the winter, thereby reducing your heating bill? I may want to rethink that - there's no way I could keep up with her intellect. But maybe Cooper could. And by then Poppy will be back. So I guess that's still a viable option. But really, did that dialog really happen? Did she really remember that word? Or is this story as made up as finding Noah's ark in Utah?
ReplyDeleteRural Ways has blogged about The Ark before (http://ruralways.blogspot.com/2009/12/walk-in-mountains.html). Does that prove that it exists? As for making up the dialog, I have just one question: If Ellen didn't think of that word, who did? There were only two of us walking together, and one of the two is of notoriously low intelligence.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, Deer are really creatures of habit. Glen and I sprayed our apple trees with a product called Liquid Fence - after a couple of rounds with this, the deer have dedided that our apple trees are obviously inferior and in spite of the fact that we have not sprayed them in two years - they have never tried to eat them again. Of course - I would recommend wearing a nose plug as the product is made of rotten eggs and is rather successful at keeping people away as well. As far as Ellen goes - I would say that the apple never falls far from the tree (to keep the orchard analogy going)
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