Remember When ↠ l.p.

The Critter Keeper

"Mommy," Cailyn leans over towards me and whispers softly "is that gonna bite me if it gets near me?" She points to the odd looking bug that the man at the front of the room is holding. We're at the library for a program, they've had someone come with their collection of animals and hold a little show. The man is a little older, white hair and protruding belly bulging under his khakis and brown colored shirt. At the moment he's holding something that had an almost unpronounceable name, it has a lot of legs, looking like a mix of a daddy-long legs and a large cricket. The girls having begged me to sit on the floor with them (I'm the only parent to do so) and they're now edging closer and closer to me as the "critter keeper", as the call him, begins walking around the room with the bug on his hand.

"No mi ha, he wouldn't bring it out and near you if he knew it would hurt you." I reassure her. So far I've been scared three times when the critter keeper has raised his voice to rile up the kids or talk above them. The program has been attended by mainly 7-8 year olds with a few children and teens who are a little older. Lemme tell you, these little kids have some loud screams. Although it is very amusing to watch them freak out over a spider or shriek and then laugh when the critter keeper manages to trick them. He'll pretend like he has an animal to show and then he'll stumble and toss whatever he's carrying into the audience. It's the revealed to be a plastic toy or something within seconds of the children on the front screaming and backing away. "If you don't want to be too close to whatever he's bringing around just move to my other side." I remind Cailyn. 

"Okay..." she whispers back, trailing off when the passes by us with the bug clinging to his pointer finger. Once he's gone passed us she relaxes and starts getting caught up in the show. To my surprise, it's not her but Tessie that ends up going to the front as a volunteer a moment later.

"I need some younger children for this one," the critter keeper instructs us. "How about," he motions to Tessie and two little girls sitting beside her, probably all roughly the same age. "you three, come on up here! And you young man, come on up." He positions them around a little table he has and proceeds to tell them about how he feeds the snakes he has frozen mice and rats. "We're going to pretend to cook some bugs for them to eat," he says, holding out his hand to show several plastic bugs. "So you," he says pointing to one of the little girls "are going to be in charge of putting in the oil, so when I tell you go you're going to add the oil." There's a small table with a sort of dish platter (only it's an oddly shaped silver platter with a pointed top to cover it) and as they go on he instructs one child to be in charge of the pepper, another of the salt, and Tessie in charge of Mrs. Dash. "You know what Mrs. Dash is right?" he asks her. She nods in response, smiling up at him shyly. "Oh I like you! Great, now when I say go you," he points to the first girl "you're going to add the oil and then one by one all of you will go. Then, as each item goes in we need to have some sound affects to make it sound authentic!" He turns towards the sea of little faces, "I need all of you to make the sound of these bugs cooking? Can you do that?"

"YEAH!!" A chorus answers him, Cailyn includes. As the children add the ingredients to the platter all of the ones still sitting on the floor make incredible accurate cooking sounds. 

"Now, once we've got all this added in, what do we need to do?" He questions them as he puts the lid on to cover what they've cooked, so to speak. "Well we need to let it cook, because whenever you mommies or daddies are cooking they let things cook for a certain time right? So let's go ahead and say this has been cooking for 18-20 minutes okay?" He moves his hand towards the lid covering the platter. He lifts it off dramatically and it's almost just like the movies, it takes the kids on the floor and those around the table a minute to realize that the fake bugs that were previously in the platter have been replaced by long, pill-like bugs! Then the screams start, as the kids who were volunteering take several steps backwards. Tessie takes another look at whats in the platter and comes running back to me, burying herself in my arms and causing me to wince as she throws herself onto me.

"It's okay, they aren't going to hurt you," I laugh as the critter keeper begins to tell the kids about the hissing cockroaches that are now in the platter. Tessie clings to me and sits in my lap for the next few animals, which I don't really blame her for considering they were several spiders. Cailyn gets asked to go up a little later....to kiss a toad! She, apparently decides to go all in and leans in to kiss it, the critter keeper moves the toad away at the last minute, thankfully. I'm all for her being daring and loving animals but surely kissing a toad isn't very sanitary. I laugh along with everyone else as the critter keeper explains that the toad, Burt, wouldn't have wanted to kiss Cailyn really either. 

The rest of the program is all reptilian, which the girls seem to enjoy more. One of the moms gets called up to help hold a large boa constrictor, I think we were told it was about ten feet long! He pulled up the mom and about five kids to hold it all. At the end of the program we leave with smiling faces, and quite a few books too, and it's all that the girls can talk about for the rest of the day.