We went on a “nature hike” today to find something extraordinary on a crappy, dull day and nature came through in a big way.

We stumbled upon an injured bird.

Hanna with her no-stone-unturned attitude found a juicy, ripe worm and approached the wounded sparrow. She tossed the worm and the bird lifted her wings ready to attack the human who dwarfed her by at least a thousand times.

Ellie began to cry. “Why are we hurting nature! Stop hurting NATURE HANNA!!!!”

I explained that Hanna was helping nature and Ellie shouted back, snot running down her face and onto her lips (why does that still disgust me?) “What about the worm? He’s part of nature too!!!” She went on, “Why should he have to die? That’s not helping anybody!”

I knelt down beside Ellie and tried to explain that by feeding the bird the worm, the bird would digest the worm, poop him out onto our plants to be used as fertilizer and we would grow delicious fruits and vegetables.

Ellie enraged: THAT ONLY HELPS PEOPLE!!! THAT DOESN’T HELP THE WORM!

So she’s officially perfected vegetarianism and we are well on our way to full-on veganism.

She marched home to fetch some seeds to feed the bird and a scoop to put the worm back under the rock from which he came.

She wanted to do this alone, fearing the rest of us meat eaters would screw up the plan and accidentally kill the worm, eat the seeds meant for the bird or eat the bird and use the sticks it was sitting on as toothpicks.

Then, something truly amazing happened. Basically, the bird attacked Ellie exposing four eggs under her body.

Ellie tossed the seeds and ran crying towards the house. She yelped, “The bird started screaming ‘bleek, bleek, bleek’ and pecked at my feet! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

I checked out the bird-to-English dictionary on Wikipedia and “bleek bleek bleek” means “Giant human with pink-polka-dotted, pom-pom on the top of your hat, back-the-fuck-off!”

She cried and cried but after I washed her face with some warm water and gave her some juice-water, she hugged me, still crying while I explained the wonderful lesson in nature she had just witnessed.

Me: Mommies will protect their babies with ferocity no matter what seemingly insurmountable object might be in her way. Imagine a bird that’s smaller than your thumb willing to stand up to big, human you?

Ellie nuzzled into me and said, “Mommy, thanks for taking care of me. I hate birds.”

Me too Ellie and worms.