Favorite School Story Ever

Liam is wrapping up his last week of preschool. Over the last few weeks, they have been watching the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies. Yesterday was the day they let the butterflies go. The morning class let out two of the three remaining butterflies. Liam's afternoon class let out the last one.

As the teacher was letting the last little butterfly go free, in her sweetest preschool teacher voice she said, "Good-bye little butterfly. Have a nice life!"

All the kids watched as the butterfly spread his tiny wings and flew up into the air where a bird immediately swooped down and ate the butterfly right in front of their innocent, watchful faces.

Seriously. Or, as his teacher said: Way bad timing bird! It's like the preschool version of Animal Kingdom only better. All week they have been talking about graduating from preschool and going off to their big, new schools where they can spread their wings and have a nice life.....

Welcome to the real world, kids. Oh and have fun in Kindergarten. (Just watch out for the birds. They're everywhere!)

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And then, as if on cue, this morning I looked over and saw the cat flinging something around in the dining room. Liam walked out of the bathroom just in time to see the drama unfold:

Remind me to get a new rug for our dining room!

"Mom? Is that a bird?" he asked.

"Yes, Liam," I said as I threw the cat in the sunroom and then scooped the dead bird into a dust pan.

"Is it dead?" he asked.

"Yes, Liam," I answered, throwing the bird into the trash can in the garage.

"Did the cat eat it?" he asked.

"No, but he would have liked to," I said.

And THAT, Liam, is called predation, part of the continuous cycle of predator kills prey that you started learning about yesterday. Wanna know who's gonna kill the cat?!