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Thursday, April 28, 2011

Brandon Vs. The Badger

I do normal mommy things like pick up my kids from school.

I expect my kids to do normal kids things like walk from their classrooms, down the sidewalk, and into our van. Since we don't live in an unsafe town or school district, this is not an unreasonable expectation.

What I do not expect is to be waiting outside the van for a missing child, namely, my son Brandon, and another mom to say to me, "Oh, Brandon is still by the fence on the sidewalk figuring out how to set a badger trap."

It takes a lot for my eyes to get really, really big and my jaw to drop wide open, especially when it comes to Brandon and his antics, but yep, after school, real-life badger-trapping, on the playground, in the middle of Wisconsin winter....that one will get me every single time.

Now, the other mom's son is friends with Brandon and the friend was also very excited about catching a badger, so the mom kindly filled me in:

An animal burrow had been found on the playground at recess. No one knew for sure what was living in it, but our boys were convinced it was a badger. The kids were not allowed to go anywhere near it (for safety reasons), but our boys were going to to figure out how to trap it from the sidewalk side of the school because that wasn't school property. Brandon had stayed behind to figure out the best way to build a trap.

So this conversation happened in less than a minute. I told Jon to watch the kids in the van (I always have extra kids with me, just in case), and I BOLTED for Brandon. My heart was racing and I was extremely worried that I was going to have a hot mess of kid vs ticked off Wisconsin winter mammal on my hands.

I'm not all up-to-date on my Who's Who of Wisconsin Winter Wildlife, but I do know enough to know that most of them are hungry, unfriendly, and do not want to be trapped by a curious eight year old.

So I found an rather excited Brandon examining all the possibilities this burrow could hold. He KNEW it was a badger. He KNEW he and his buddies were going to trap it. He was irritated that I was cutting into his planning time. I just didn't get it. I was mean.

In short, I was stifling his creative process.

I was awed at Brandon's tenacity, his curiosity, his creativity, and so danged relieved that I was almost in tears. My blood pressure at finding all his fingers intact was such that I could no longer hear my heart beat in my ears and my breathing was almost normal.

Brandon spent the night dreaming of ways to catch his badger.

When I picked him up from school the next day, it was to find a rather irritated Brandon. It turns out the school had someone come in and safely remove the animal from the school grounds, which was rather boring.

And, to add insult to injury, the badger wasn't a badger. It was a raccoon.

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