Wed. Reminisce:Collectors

When I was eight and Kayli was six, we lived at BYU. In Heritage Halls to be exact. My dad was teaching there over the summer, so our large family lived in two of the dorm apartments. I have to say it was a pretty fun summer. But not for my mom. She was sick, very sick. And to put it nicely, things went smoother if we didn't hang around the apartment too long. So, basically Kayli and I took free range of BYU and did whatever we wanted most days. (We were in a BYU summer program too--it's not as if we were left to ourselves entirely.) Really, we didn't get into trouble except for being kicked out of the canal a couple times.

Oh, and once, Jerusha Nordquist and I filled doll clothes full of berries and squashed them, and then "borrowed" everyone's laundry soap (at least thoses who left their soap in their storage units unlocked) to see which one worked best. I do remember getting in trouble for that, and then feeling bad because I was off doing something else when our mess was discovered and Jerusha had to clean most of it up. Sorry Jerusha.

Actually, we spent most of our time at the bookstore reading books to be honest. Bad habits formed young. In college, I read a whole Robert Jordan book at Borders once. Hee. Hee. We also watched quite a few dollar movies, spent some time in the art museum, ran through the sprinklers a lot, and played in the sand in the volleyball courts. Good times.

Anyway, to get back to the main point of the story and to tie in the photo that I know you all are wondering about, one time Kayli and I caught a praying mantis. We thought it was so cool. No, I mean so cool. So utterly cool, that we decided to sell it to the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum. Yep. We were smart like that. You see, we spent quite a bit of time there, although it was quite a hike for us, it was worth it because we could see an elephant, a bear and a lion, among other things. We loved it. And on one of our previous visits we had noticed that they had a tank with live praying manti. So during our long walk to the museum we discussed in depth what we would buy at their gift shop with the money they would pay us. The anticipation was immense.

Upon arriving at the museum, we confidently walked to the section with the manti, and then detoured to browse around the gift shop just to be sure of our choices, and then left our praying manti on the counter in it's ziplocked bag.

Yeah. We chickened out. We didn't have the guts to ask about selling it. However, after a while of walking around a bit more of the museum we went back just to see how our poor mantis faired.

The nice lady at the desk told us they had added him to the tank upon his discovery because he didn't seem to be doing so well zipped up, but she made no mention of monetary reward.

Perhaps another time Kayli and I will have to venture out for more exotic creatures. At least we can say we contributed to BYU's Natural History Museum's exhibit. Not everyone can say that.