Luckily (or unluckily depending on the day) my mom has neighbors across the street who have kids. One couple has 2 and the other house has 2. Those four and my two have become a posse over the 7 months we've been here at Chez Nana. They bike around the cul de sac and weave in and out of houses on their way somewhere. The spread their crap all over the neighborhood, look for bugs in the greenbelt areas sprinkled around, play near the ponds & streams and generally just have a good time. That's putting a positive spin on it. Some days I wish we lived somewhere without kids because of all of the drama.

Like yesterday when one of the other kids brought out 3 hard boiled eggs. She TOLD me they were hard boiled. I came to find out there were not.

Anyway, the 6 of them fought over these 3 eggs for what felt like hours. I tried to ignore them as I laid under the tree reading US Magazine The Economist.

As expected, the eggs broke and everyone blamed Finn. Even a kid from down the street WHO WASN'T EVEN THERE, blamed Finn. I understand that Finn is on the bottom of the totem pole but those little fuggers always take it too far blaming him. I knew he hadn't done it because I had seen one of the other kids break one of the eggs but I cleaned up the runny nastiness anyway. Puke.

So, by now I'm ready to go inside and call it a day.

All of the kids have disappeared to go find bugs behind someone's house when I hear a ruckus. They come flying back to the front of the houses and I can hear them shouting "He's DEAD! It's Dead!!! MOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!"

"Who is dead??" I say sort of alarmed but not really because all of the kids were accounted for.

"Houdini!!!" They all yelled.

It was one of the kids' cat who had gone missing a few weeks ago. (Peter's theory is cats don't go missing. They are dead. Good theory. Especially with coyotes and raccoons in the area.)

Once I found out it was their cat, for some reason I just stood back and watched the posse react. (well to be perfectly honest, the reason I just stood there is that I didn't care. Awful, I know. But true. There have been many many altercations with this neighbor and actually her cats so I actually kind of though "well, that solves THAT problem.)

I digress...

The neighbor went out the back to deal with the dead kitty while another neighbor and I tried to keep the troops in the front.

Finn kept going up to anyone who would listen and saying 'He's DEAD. The Cat's DEAD.' It's was sort of morbidly funny. He wasn't trying to be cruel. He was just stating the facts. All of the kids would say "WE KNOW FINN!"

The little girl owner of the cat sobbed. Poor dear. To find your cat attacked and dead. The other neighbor girl comforted her on the stoop.

Hadley ran inside our house to immediately write a letter to the family about how sorry she was. I love that she took pen to paper. My sweet rare bird.

The whole scene reminded me of Stand By Me. Just in the sense that kids are so random and their reactions to things are honest and pure. Such a phenomenal movie. Scenes from the movie flickered in my brain as I kept watching this dirty gaggle of children running in circles and talking all at the same time.

I was sympathetic to H&F about how sad the situation was but reminded them that this happens. This is life and sometimes animals kill other animals. I was a little fearful that one of the sweet, well meaning neighbors would pontificate about why God needed Houdini in heaven (nothing worse than strangers shoving religious dogma down the open mouths of my babies) so I stated again that these are the ways of nature.

I will bring flowers over with the kids today to say how sorry we are. I'm not a total heartless beeyatch.