Today we went to one of our favorite parks for a preschool program...about swamps. It was a fun time, to be sure, but I discovered something during that program.
I'm not a nature lover. Well, at least not a nature lover like the people who work for the Nature Center at the Metro Parks.
It was so bizarre to hear them talk about the swamp with such evident fondness. "It's like we are looking at a piece of history."
And when we caught some little squiggly things in the swamp, I got a bit excited because I thought that they were tadpoles. But it turns out that they were mosquito larva. Baby mosquitoes. When several mother's expressed sentiments such as "kill them now before they grow up," which I heartily agreed with, the naturalists replied that the mosquito larva needed to be put back because they were an important part of the food chain. Which is the exact moment that I realized that there was a fundamental difference between me and that nice nature lady.
I'm all for the draining of swamps. The only things that live in swamps are bugs, slugs and baby bugs. We caught mosquito larva, ticks and slugs today. What do we really need those for?
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