a couple of updates

The first update regards our squirrel who moved house. One week after I saw the mom squirrel moving her babies to a nest in another tree, I returned to the same spot and looked up to find…the original tree had been cut down! I guess the tree had been receiving enough special attention that Mom Squirrel got nervous and decided to chance transferring the babies to another home. And thank goodness she did.

The second update: we have not found Kiddo#1’s wallet. I searched all over. I prayed for it to turn up. I had others praying for it to turn up. I asked for angelic help: not only my own, but my son’s guardian angel. (And for reasons I never quite understood, Kiddo#1’s guardian angel scares me. But I asked for help anyhow.)

Keep in mind that in the past, when I’ve asked for angelic help finding things I’ve stupidly misplaced, they’ve turned up immediately, like the cell phone missing for two months, which turned up five minutes after I asked the angel for help–and it turned up in front of his picture. The record was (no joke) three seconds. As in, I said, “Any idea where that knitting needle went?” and then pivoted, walked to the wall (we were in my son’s room) and looked behind the toy shelf and there was the knitting needle, lying flush to the baseboard.

More “ordinary” is what happened last month, when the cordless phone went missing on a Tuesday; on Wednesday I waited for it to turn up. On Thursday I looked all over for it, even turning off the other phones and calling it, to no avail. Friday at three in the morning I asked for help finding it. And Friday morning, at 8AM, I had this sudden urge to find all six of the shape-sorter pieces, three of which were on the couch. I reached into the couch cushions to see if the other pieces were there, and there was the phone.

I begged for help finding the wallet, and still nothing.

I searched everywhere. I stood on chairs, disassembled furniture, stripped beds, pulled apart the book shelves. Nothing.

So this week, I’m going to tell the company to go ahead and send a check.

I thought about Cricket’s suggestion, to lie. Maybe it would help the thief to feel he’d been protected, or he’d wonder why we’d do that and then see himself as forgivable, possibly for the first time in his life. But it wouldn’t be just one lie, would it? I’d have to tell several lies. And the ends don’t justify the means. So…no.

My guess is this: when the team came, the team lead had me go over the paperwork while his two guys got started. There wasn’t much, maybe five minutes. The guy in my son’s room must have seen the astrophotography equipment on the dresser, and he thought, “Geek kid.” I doubt he was looking for money. I bet he thought there would be old electronics, like an old iPod or an old cell phone, something he could pocket and fence, something the kid wouldn’t realize was missing for a month or two, because how often do you go looking for your outgrown MP3 players? And then he found a wallet, and he couldn’t resist temptation.

That’s my best guess. It’s sad. I don’t want to think someone would do that. But right now, we’re not left with any other options.