It was the last week of summer. Spymom believes all boys require copious outside time. Whining, Spy and Q were dragged into the yard. “Play,” I commanded. More whining ensued.

At last, I managed to get Q to play a game of catch with me. Spy, meanwhile, was poking around the yard.

Spy catches things. Bugs mostly. Toads and frogs sometimes. Once he spent a half hour chatting to a worm as the two of them played with the hose. This day, he caught something a little more… exciting.

The scene:

“I’ve caught something! Come see,” Spy yelled.

“Be nice,” I yelled back and tossed the ball to Q. Q rolled his eyes.

“OOW! It bit me!”

Okay? Now Spy had my attention. There was nothing in that front yard that he’s caught before that has teeth.

The victim:

Spy had snagged a vole. Which was now running quickly for cover. A key question ran through my mind: Are voles nocturnal?

Once upon a time, Spy’s aunt – age 8 – was bitten by a bat in broad daylight. It flew away. And she suffered through a series of very painful rabies shots because the animal could not be analyzed.

With this in mind, I grabbed the watering can and started smacking at the vole, shoving it back toward the driveway, preventing its escape. “Go grab some Tupperware. We need to trap the vole.” I yelled at Q. “What’s Tupperware?” he yelled back, running nonetheless for the kitchen. He knew what I wanted, however, and returned with a drinking glass.

While Q crouched, holding the poor rodent captive, I dragged a shell-shocked Spy to the kitchen sink.

Yes indeed, the vole’s teeth had broken skin.

Alcohol.

Neosporin.

Too many band-aids.

I called Spydad. How convenient to have a pathologist in the family just now.

I explained the situation. “The internet is still out, thank you Tropical Storm Irene. Can you check and see if voles carry rabies?”

The answer? “Theoretically. But probably not.”

Of course, probably is not a good enough answer for a mom.

“Let your ER know, we’re coming in. And we’re bringing the vole.”

I grabbed the recently abandoned hamster Habitrail from the dining room floor (more on that later) and went back outside to wide-eyed Q. Together, we stuffed the vole into the cage and slammed the lid. Into the trunk went the cage. Within minutes, Spy and Q were buckled up.

“Am I going to have to get shots?” Spy worried from the back seat.

“Maybe,” I replied, unwilling to spare his feelings. Sometimes a little deep emotion can help impress upon a kid the severity of the situation. Thus followed a lecture about touching wild animals (specifically mammals) and the rabies virus.

We arrived in the pathology department with this in tow:

Expectant and amused faces met us at every turn. Co-workers couldn’t help but burst into laughter to see their boss carrying the multi-colored cage followed by a parade of wide-eyed boys. Spy’s adventure was today’s excitement.

Turned out we didn’t need to go to the ER. The infectious disease doctor stopped in Spydad’s office to hand over a prescription for Augmentin. He was amused. And impressed that Spy had managed to snag a wild rodent. The concern for rabies was almost zero.

That’s one thing about scientist types. You’ll never get us to commit to anything 100%.

The lab techs found this both interesting and amusing. “Let’s send it in. We never get to do this.”

Out came the forms. “Uh Oh. It says we have to send the specimen in dead. And on ice.”

“Oh,” I replied, dragging a cold pack from the snack bag I’d hastily thrown together. “Here. Use this.” ER waits can be long.

“We have to kill it,” she repeated, not looking pleased with the idea.

“Not a problem,” I replied. “Six years of mouse research has me thoroughly qualified to do the job.” I was led to a hood where I gloved up and pulled the vole from the cage. The poor thing was nearly dead of fright already. This is one of the (many) reasons wild rodents cannot be made into pets. They will die of fright. Literally.

Moments later, the vole was packaged on ice and I was being given directions to the Department of Health. We didn’t warrant a courier.

I left Spy and Q playing video games under their dad’s desk and departed. Nobody even blinked at the Dept. of Health.

Over the next 24 hours, Spy worriedly inquired about the test results. He worried so much that we covered the basics of viral and bacterial disease and what was being done to keep him safe and healthy. As such, the nasty liquid antibiotic was consumed readily, treated by Spy like a magic elixir.

A day later, the results were in: the vole was rabies free. Spy jumped up with a cheer and did a happy dance.

Spymom has since noted the family hamster has been treated with more respect.

In a creative moment, Spy spun a story along with his drawing. You must be careful approaching our house now, especially if you’re a “bad guy”. There are multiple radioactive spiders guarding our house now. They will shoot poison into your wounds which will eat away at your blood until you begin to mutate horribly. Should you not possess a wound, they will bite and provide one for you.

Accordingly, a sign has been posted.

Spy loves insects. Worms too. And when a spider is trapped in our house, we call him to execute catch and release.

So it seemed natural to let him have the ant farm he so desperately craved: AntWorks. Space age gel? Well, that’s because NASA wanted to study ant tunneling in space and they needed a substrate that wouldn’t collapse the tunnels during lift off. AND the gel contains all the food and water the ants need.

Spy insisted that we order the harvester ants immediately. He stood by my elbow and monitored the online ordering process to be certain it was complete before heading to the bus stop. His first question that afternoon as he got off the bus, “Are they here yet?”

Patiently, he waited two whole days. Then they came in a plastic test tube, all 25 of them.

But the next morning, one made an escape. The lid wasn’t perfectly flat. Easily solved with two pieces of scotch tape. Unfortunately, we lost two and one was mushed in his attempt – forever entombed between the lid and the bottom to serve as a grisly reminder to his cohort.

So we spent the next few weeks watching them build tunnels. Fascinating.

And then they were shuffled to the side until this past Saturday when Spy moved them to the middle of the kitchen table as he worked on an art project. Hours passed. Spy moved to a computer game. Spymom, Spydad and Q were in another room when it grew eerily quiet in the kitchen.

All of you know I should have investigated. But I was tired and so I waited.

When at last I pried myself off the couch, Spy headed me off at the doorway. He shoved a finger in my face. One dead mushed ant.

“He got out!” Smiles. “But I fixed it.”

Indeed he had – and using materials easily at hand: Glitter Glue.

“Now they can’t get out,” Spy stated proudly. Then he explained the extra gold glitter glue on the lid. “And at night, they’ll think they see stars.”

Spymom wonders if this will affect oxygen levels, but chose to stay silent…

This year, Spy insisted on being the Grim Reaper. But not just any grim reaper. Check out the cool material he picked out.

On a related topic (okay, it’s a bit of a tangent, but follow me here) we had a number of mice invade our living room. Following instinct, our cat, Darwin, proceeded to play with his food. Twice we rescued the mouse from Darwin’s paws and set the stunned mouse free. Once, the mouse ran up a curtain and sat quivering on the window until spymom trapped him in a drinking glass… then set him free.

But the fourth time? Well, Darwin hadn’t quite gotten to his meal. Spy gave “Mousey” a proper burial, granite headstone (bodystone?) and all.

“Mommy. Daddy. Come quick. There’s a really big, really ugly bug up here.”

Spy’s voice was remarkably calm as he called to us down the stairs. Yet there was definitely a hint of worry in his voice.

And this is a boy who loves bugs. Spy has a bug zoo/cage that he fills with his bare fingers as I, Spymom, try not to visibly cringe.

But this bug wouldn’t fit in that cage.

Because it was a brown bat.

Spydad’s voice carried far more concern when he went to investigate and announced a bat was flying around upstairs. I ran up the stairs with a broom in hand, ready to grab a towel. This wouldn’t have been the first bat I’ve caught.

But then it flew into the guest room and we followed, slamming the door behind us. With the broom, I checked to make certain it wasn’t hiding in the curtains, then threw open the window. We backed out, trusting the bat would find its way outside.

This morning? No bat.

What with the approaching cold and flu season, every good spy knows that the best way to survive adverse conditions is to stay as physically fit and healthy as possible.

Spy took this to heart in yesterday’s health class where they discussed the importance of washing your hands:

Sure, the spirochete is fairly accurate and the coccus bacteria well-executed, but I was most impressed with his accurate rendition of a bacteriophage. I’m not sure if the other one on his finger is coming or going….  And I think the brown germ might be a rotavirus or the influenza virus itself. Opinions?

The annual flu vaccine for Spy is a nasal spray, but soon it will be time for that all important H1N1 vaccination and Spy did not do so well with shots at the last pediatric visit. But perhaps Kindergarten is too early to start training to resist evil, mad scientists?

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Today, Q built a small box out of Lego for Spy.

Spy filled this box and gleefully presented it to his father.

His unsuspecing father (football was on, it was the perfect setup) opened this box.

Really, he should have picked up on the giggling.

A giant ant crawled out and started running across his lap.  Spy had located such a large ant that its pinchers were easily visible.

Spy has no fear of bugs. He thinks they’re cute.

He’s just lucky he didn’t try this one on me.

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Spy woke me up at 1:32 am.

I awoke to the strange sensation of fingers crawling up my arm – spider-style – in complete darkness. “Where’s my Leapster?” he asks. “Its the middle of the night,” I respond, walking him back to his room. “See, no sun. And the crickets are still playing night music.”

I return to bed, hoping there will be no repeat visit. For once there wasn’t.

I think he’s excited about the first day of school.

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