Yak's House

Today, during quiet time, I unintentionally fell asleep while the kids were in their beds.

The girls typically nap during this time, so when I woke up, I was not surprised to find my son Ezekiel, awake, (NOT in his bed) working on something. I came into the living room and found this..

He said "I built a house for Yak.."

Who is Yak, you ask??

Well the story goes..

One rainy day, while me and the kiddos were playing outside, we discovered a snail family in our courtyard. EZ wanted so badly to take one home, so I said I would allow one to stay with us as a guest in our home just for ONE night, and then we would put him back outside and set him free to be with his friends again. EZ and the girls excitedly consented, and so we got an empty juice bottle from our trash at home, cleaned it, filled it with courtyard snatchings and water and poked a bunch of holes at the top. EZ named him Yak that night and we've been calling him that ever since. He stayed with us on top of our ridge overnight, and to Darien's and my surprise, he survived until the next day, lol!

So, just as promised, we opened up his bottle and Darien put him on the patio ledge, because he saw some snails down below and figured that Yak would just make his way down to the bottom eventually. And he actually did just that. We watched him slowly make his way out of the bottle, and down he went. We didn't see Yak for two days.

Then out of the blue, we noticed he had come back. So I put some more water in the bottle, and actually gave him a small little reservoir too. And this is where he has stayed now for about a week. It wasn't until later, that I realized why he had come back. I was outside, down on ground level just below our patio and noticed a bunch of dried up snail shells. The snails had roasted in the sun after the rain had stopped the next day. My heart went out to Yak in that moment.. but at least he was smart!

 So after my son so thoughtfully designed and built this house, I got inspired and decided that maybe we SHOULD give him a real home (and hopefully take my son's mind off of having a puppy for a while..) which would give the kids a good starter pet to practice taking care of. So we went to the dollar store and got a bucket, some potting soil, and a $3 low-light plant from Walmart. An all together $5 investment.

The bucket was a little smaller than I thought, but oh well..

we can always upgrade later when the plant out grows it.

We think he likes it!

Some tomato (and eggshell for calcium)