Nature Encounters and Eyeballs

I took The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, to the eye doctor today. He grabbed my reading glasses last week when we were going over a lesson and said he could see better with them on so I made the appointment toot sweet. What an ordeal! It was like we were trying to kill him when the assistant put the drops in his eyes, for Pete's sake. I had to set him on my lap and wrap him in a full body bear hug so she could get the drops in, and he's a strong little kid so it took everything I had. They went in though, and a little later he was ready to see the doctor. Sure enough, the doc said he could use a mild strength lens, weaker than my reading glasses, if it would make him feel better. (He came short of using the word placebo, but that's the basic idea he got across.) ;) So we looked at the eyeglasses they had there. $200.00. FOR READING GLASSES. Umm, no, thank you. I went to the local grocery and picked up a pair there for $20.00. Luckily TWC has a big old head just like his momma and a small pair of grown up glasses fit him just fine. He's been wearing them since, silly kid. You can't see far away with reading glasses, you ONLY need to put them on when you read or do things up close. You do NOT need them to play outside!! Hey, whatever. If he's happy and it's not hurting him or anyone else, more power to him.

Then we saw something cool on the way home. It was like National Geographic right in our own front yard! We were almost to our house when I saw an ibis take off from our neighbor's lawn with a small brown SNAKE in its beak. Eeesh. The snake put up a mighty struggle and sure enough, the ibis dropped the darn thing IN OUR YARD. Then there was the stand off. The ibis tried to grab the snake again but that critter was having no part of it. He was fierce! He looked like a cobra rearing up and threatening to bite the bird. The ibis was still trying to make a grab, but was backing down when Daddy Ibis flew over. Daddy Ibis was a much bigger bird and he approached the snake, but that little snake was still showing his fangs. The ibis, and there were several of them now, all conferred for a while then decided to let this particular morsel go on its way and flew off. So now they left the darn snake in my yard, stupid birds. I parked the car (we were watching from the street) and we jumped out to see if we could see where the snake went but it disappeared in a matter of seconds! We didn't walk out in the grass or anything, I didn't want to get bit, but there's not a lot of cover in our lawn. We couldn't spot him though so we, like the ibis, went on our way. I say again, eeesh. I hope he slithered on out of our yard!!! It was cool to watch, though.