You found WHAT??

Yesterday morning I was busy working in my home office as usual. My husband had been outside mowing. My oldest son (J) was in his room, happily playing. My youngest son (K), who will be seven soon, was playing outside and hopefully staying out of his dad's way. Let me back up a minute here. We don't have a typical yard and we don't live in a typical neighborhood. We live on a rural street with houses scattered about. We have a portion of woods on our property and we have private forestland in back of the house.

K came inside and came down to my office (which is on the lower level of the house). He was all excited to show me something. It was two teeth stuck together. He said, "Mom, I found this. It's teeth." Yes, upon inspection, it appeared to be an animal's teeth. I couldn't quite tell what kind of animal as there were only the two teeth, but they were brown and looked rather old. He said, "They were on a stick and I pulled this part off." I said, "A stick? Where?" He said, "In the woods. Back down by the fence." I said, "Could you find it again? I want to see it." He said, "I know you can't come see it right now because you are working, but when you are done can you come see it?" I said, "Yes, when I stop for lunch." He left the room and went back outside. I immediately went to Facebook to post that my son found teeth in the yard.

When it came time to stop for lunch, I went outside to find K and ask him where the teeth were found. He led me down into the woods, along a trail, and I realized that some tree branches had blown over during the last strong winds and decided they'd need to be removed. I had to either duck real low or pull them away in order to get through. At one point, I saw what looked like K's black knit hat. I said, "K, what's this? Why is that there?" He said, "Oh, it's wet," and kept walking. I picked it up and it was sopping wet. I wondered how long it had been out there! I carried it with the intent of draping it over the porch rail when we got back to the house.

I followed K deeper into the woods and along the back fence where my husband and I planted tree seedlings. Here, you might be wondering why, if we have all these trees already, why we planted more. Well, you see, we didn't want to be seeing Bob's house in the winter when the leaves fall off the alders and other leaf trees. We can barely see Bob's roof but just don't want to see it at all.

Anyway, back on track, K got to where the teeth were found and the 'stick' that the teeth were on. I saw it on the ground at the base of a fir tree. I said, "K, that isn't a stick. That's a part of a jaw." It was about seven inches long with a slight curve to it. It looked like a side portion of jaw. My first thought was that it came from a coyote, but maybe not because the coyotes around here aren't very big. K asked what he should do with the two teeth he found earlier, and I told him to put it back into the jaw with the other teeth where it belonged. I said he could keep the whole thing, but NOT in the house. He put the two teeth back into the jaw and carried it with him back towards the house. When we got halfway there, he noticed that the two teeth were gone from the jaw. "Where did the teeth go?" he asked. I said, "They probably fell out somewhere on the trail. You still have the jaw, though, and there are teeth on it." He said, "Yeah, I'll keep this." I said, "You can keep it, but I don't want it in the house. You find a place outside where you want to keep it."

When we got back to the house, K decided to put the bone on a landscaping brick sitting in the front yard. We went into the house to fix something for lunch, and I told K to wash his hands. Seeing as how that jaw was part of a mouth and who knows how long it had been sitting out there, I didn't want to chance a germ/bacteria infestation.

K is happy to have an artifact that he can show people. I love how he is imaginative and creative and will play outside til the cows come home. Look what he found! A jaw and teeth. That wouldn't have happened if he had been indoors all day like his brother. The two of them are so different which is why I love them so.