Mom Diaries

This particular post is during the time I was heavily pregnant with my first born, GBee. So, it was in 2017.

It all started with me returning to Hyderabad. Living in an apartment in India is not new to me, but finding myself in the company of many animals is!

One fine Sunday afternoon, when our home was filled with guests of all ages, we were immersed in talking about various topics, when all hell broke loose! I heard cries which scared the hell out of me. The cries came from our veradah. Inspite of my present state, I rushed to see what the matter was.

There, standing near the utility area were two monkeys, eating the snacks mom had given our house-help. The monkeys scared off our 60 year old house help like a couple of predators and began munching her hot bajjis. (Mom had prepared bajji for all our guests and gave some to our house help.) Our house help was so scared, she cried in blood curdling scream, ran towards our watchman and that was the scene before our eyes. Both the monkeys were munching away the snacks, like there was no tomorrow!

It is all together another story of how the monkeys were shoo-ed away.

And then, there is the cat!

The stubborn little creature can’t be scared and shoo-ed off easily. Even when we shout or shoo it away, the cat doesn’t bat an eye! It looks on with little respect at our “cat shooing away skills”!

The first time I saw the little monster was when I left the door to the verandah open and the cat found it too tempting not to barge in. I had to hurl a slipper near the cat (taking pains not to hit it. Yes, PETA,I am not cruel to animals, but I don’t like being taken for granted either!) The stupid one, didn’t budge! It took three of us to force it away.

One or two such incidents left me with bad taste for cats! (I had a cat as a pet for one day in my childhood! Did I happen to tell you that story? If not, will do that in the future)

What do you do if the said cat empties the dust bin, yes, every single day!

And I once caught the same cat staring at the coconut tree, what a weirdo! ( on second thought, there is a belief that cats can scare away ghosts, so this stray kitty was probably scaring off a coconut tree ghost! Lol)

Cat staring the coconut tree!

I also took a picture of a tiny little mud structure made by mud wasps, which now reminds me of the cartoon GBee and KBee watch regularly, Ben and Holly, where Ben is an elf and Holly is a winged fairy. (There is a belief in our state that if wasps built a mud structure in your house, it implies good things are on their way to you, in my case, birth of my GBee)

Mud structure made by hardworking wasps

That was when I decided that living in the heart of the city, one can still feel like they are living in a modern ranch with lots of animals for company and there it is, my own Animal Farm!

P.S:

You can hardly control a child these days, let alone shooing away animals, who are less intelligent than a child.
The concept of cats scaring off ghosts was also seen in the movie The Mummy, if anyone cares to recall it!
On totally unrelated note, I love two songs from two sitcoms, “smelly cat” from F.R.I.E.N.D.S and “soft kitty, warm kitty” from The Big Bang Theory.
With industrialization, more and more monkeys come into cities and are creating nuisance on a regular basis. I recently saw a video of monkeys taking a respite in the over head tank of a house. They were having an unorganised pool party! I deleted the video by mistake and it’s not AI generated one, it’s an original.
I always imagined there were fairies in our garden etc and Ben And Holly has similar concept of humans interaction with elves and fairies.

Disclaimer: Come on, Mr.George Orwell (Desi born British novelist), I am just using your highly popular book title, but that’s it. My post is not plagiarized in anyway. Thanks for letting me use the title! 😛

It gives me immense pleasure when I see my kids playing outside, with worms and insects no less. I feel satisfied and pat myself on the back, when they entertain themselves with insects and not with the T.V or the much dreaded cell phone. Ya, they take after me.(Though they still have a long way to go) I had the best childhood, playing with all kinds of insects (one of the perks of being an introvert) and I still find it funny how my mom never stopped me from playing with them.(She probably never knew!)

Let me make this clear. Playing with insects involves, observing them from close quarters, seeing what they do when a leaf is placed in front of them or when food is available readily. It also involves checking out their living quarters, like an anthill and trying to understand how they manage to make those! I hope this doesn’t sound creepy, but it is entertaining in its own right.

I had previously written innumerable posts about this, but they are lost in the sea of internet and my back up issues of blogging. I may write about them in future again, but for now, the topic is the kids playing with worms, an earthworm, to be specific, if you are really into details!

We went on our bi-monthly visit to my parents house and the kids were playing in the verandah, when this little incident had taken place.

My parents have a lengthy verandah which kids their age love. They can race each other, listen to the birds early in the morning, run after the lone butterfly or even spray each other with water from the low level tap. Once or twice, some birds may even come after you, to peck your eyes out (or to kill the lice in your hair), if you make any suspicious movements!

So, one Sunday afternoon, GBee and KBee were running after their grandfather, showing him around his own garden! (Ya, they took him to a plant to show its flowers to him. They took him next to the mighty coconut tree to show him the coconuts, as if its something new. It is his own house for Heaven’s sake!)

GBee suddenly found an earthworm on the cement walkway, slowly going about its business, crawling slower than either a sloth or a snail! He called out to us. KBee too came running at once, not to miss out on the fun, whatever that excited his brother.

Spotting the rogue earthworm!

Suddenly, GBee ran away and KBee tried to touch it (or poke it, probably), but I stopped him midway. GBee returned with a tiny bucket filled with water and splashed it on top of the earthworm!

Watering the earthworm or playing with it?

I thought he was intent on killing off the poor earthworm! But I was mistaken. He was in-fact making a swimming pool for the little creepy crawly! Goes to show how much he loves a swimming pool. (He keeps asking me to buy a house with a swimming pool, as if that comes cheap!)

Once he was done pouring water, I envied it, one lucky worm, got itself a swimming pool, no less! But that might be my opinion. Who knew what the worm wanted? (It probably wanted a less adventurous life with no sudden splashes of water immersing it completely!)

Imagine if we had a downpour of rain, just like a bucket had been emptied suddenly on our heads. That would suffocate us surely. So on second thought, the earthworm must have cursed its own bad luck!

Why me?

So what do you think the worm was thinking?

P.S:

In the last panel, I zoomed the earthworm, so that I could show the facial expression better!
My daddy was impressed by GBee’s thought process, about gifting a swimming pool to the earthworm and all! Did such thought ever run in your brain? NO, right! It is so out of the box, rather, out of the bucket!
Watching insects of various sizes surely changes your perspective of life. We begin to understand life, problems and happiness are all relative. We also understand that philosophy also comes to us in bursts and intervals and thankfully, doesn’t engulf us completely. Even philosophical thoughts are temporary like our sorrows and happiness. Food for thought!
I thought my readers needed a change of pace with all the posts about Ooty. The next post will continue the progress of our vacation.

Cheerio till the next post friends.

Tag: Mom Diaries

The Animal Farm

The (Un)Lucky Worm!

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