The mystery of the disappearing lettuce.

This post won't mean much unless you have read the post on Children and Pet Animals first.

On the morning after my sons had made their own snail colony, Ainan came to me:

"It's gone."

"What?"

"The leaf we left out for the snails. It is gone."

Sure enough the rather large leaf we had left in the stairwell with the snails had disappeared - not just a little gone - but as if it had never been there.

The detective on the Case of the Missing Lettuce, that is, me, is looking for a small, slippery customer, strong enough to carry his own house on his back, escaping from the scene at about 0.05 mph. Shouldn't be too difficult to catch.

Seriously, though - letting the children play with garden animals like this does, I feel, teach them a lot about life. It also has a very subtle, important, and vital implicit lesson: a respect for the environment, for nature and for life. A child brought up with that value is a lot more likely to do the right things for this world, than one who misses out on that lesson.

As for us, we have three children who like animals - and play with them with respect. I feel pleased about that.

(If you would like to read more of the Cawley children, including Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and eight months, Fintan, four years and one month, and Tiarnan, eighteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, genetics, left-handedness, College, University, Chemistry, Science, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children. Thanks.)