Welcome to the Funny Farm by Karen Scalf Linamen

Author:Karen Scalf Linamen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HUM000000
ISBN: 9781441235763
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

25

In the Company of Critters

KACIE LOVES CRITTERS.

In fact she loves animals of all kinds, including invisible ones.

Case in point: She’s got this imaginary friend named Tito.

She began talking about Tito a couple years ago. Best we can tell, Tito is a dog. He also has a girlfriend named Marie.

Sometimes Tito has a bit of a mean streak. Like the time I was driving and looked into my rearview mirror and saw Kacie sitting quietly in her car seat, tears streaming down her face.

“Kacie! What’s wrong?”

She blinked. “Tito bit me.”

All our friends at church know about Tito. One man in particular enjoys teasing Kacie about Tito. Practically every time he sees Kacie, Herschel asks, “How’s Tito?”

Sometimes Kacie tells him. Increasingly, however, Kacie merely crosses her arms and purses her lips as if to say, “Oh puh-lease, not again.”

One day another friend overheard Herschel teasing Kacie. His curiosity piqued, Condall just had to ask, “Who in the world is Tito?”

Herschel told him.

Condall thought the whole thing was great and figured he’d get in on the fun. Squatting eye-level with Kacie, he grinned and said, “Hey Kacie, how’s Tito?”

Kacie never even blinked. She eyeballed him back and said levelly, “Tito’s dead.”

So Herschel and Condall killed Tito. Tito stayed dead for several months until Marie managed to bring him back to life. Kacie explained that Marie did this with some sort of magic stones. I figured Kacie and Marie assumed this was safe to do because Herschel and Condall had finally stopped asking about Tito.

Tito may have a mean streak, but he seems to appreciate his privacy.

When Kacie’s not playing with invisible friends, the other critters she loves are garden critters. She’s always begging me to help her find pill bugs, June bugs, crickets, even snakes.

She really loves the snakes. Little baby garden snakes. She gets this death grip around their little bodies and hangs on tight.

I always watch her closely when she’s playing with snakes. I’m not worried about her physical safety as much as her psychological health. I don’t think it’s healthy for a child to have to live with the fact that she inadvertently squeezed the life out of a baby snake with her bare hands.

Besides, Kacie’s probably already going to need therapy, what with having to kill Tito off like that.

In any case, the other day Kacie and I were wrapping up a day spent in the garden. Kacie had just spent the afternoon with many of her favorite critters. She had collected rollie pollies, chased crickets, prodded worms, studied ants, and befriended several moths.

It had been a well-populated afternoon, although if I remember right, Tito was nowhere to be seen (which, come to think of it, is probably to be expected for an invisible dog).

On our way inside for dinner, Kacie needled me with several dozen questions about worms and crickets and pill bugs and ants. I found myself explaining how all these critters and many others form a sort of community. I told her that the worms aerate the soil, and the bees pollinate the flowers, and the crickets .

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